03-24-2006, 10:49 AM
Best editorial
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Sacrifice on tap, Sonia style </b>
<b>Sonia Gandhi clearly has a very poor opinion of the collective intelligence of Indians. The claim that her forced resignation from the Lok Sabha is an act of sacrifice is palpably bogus</b>. But this would not prevent her megaphones to shout from the housetops that she has improved upon her earlier allegedly Buddha and Gandhi-like sacrifice of the prime ministerial `gaddiâ by now quitting her Rai Bareilly seat. Such low-level cunning cannot help canonize one in the hall of saints. Her decision to not become prime minister was rooted in her own peculiar situation.
Even if wasnât for her Italian origins, she realized that she lacked confidence and experience to head a difficult coalition of disparate elements. A proxy prime minister suited her rather well. He did all her dirty work, and got blamed for it, while she feigned ignorance, trying to occupy moral high ground. From Goa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Bofors, Quattrocchi, et al, Sonia proposed while Manmohan Singh most obligingly disposed. He was a willing tool in her hand because without her he would be a political cipher.
But the second act in the cheap theatricals is bound to be panned by the nation-wide audiences for the simple reason that it does not even symbolically entail any sacrifice whatsoever. Because she has not quit the Lok Sabha for good. She intends to soon come back to it by contesting the election from the Nehru-Gandhi pocket-borough in UP yet again.
<b>So where the sacrifice? </b>Indeed, her decision to resign her LS seat is a clear admission that she too had come under the mischief of the very law under which her party had earlier arranged to have Jaya Bachchan thrown out of Parliament. Having initiated the move against Jaya Bachchan, Sonia cannot complain that she was being targeted by the Opposition.
<b>There could not be two separate laws one for an opposition MP, and another for the presiding deity of the ruling arrangement.</b>Â <!--emo&:roll--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ROTFL.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ROTFL.gif' /><!--endemo--> Her resignation is an attempt to try and make some political capital out of a decision mandated by her own difficult situation. As the chairperson of the ruling frontâs National Advisory Council she had clearly come under the mischief of the law regarding an office of profit.
Not withstanding what Abhishek Singhvi and other megaphones of the Congress Party said on television, there is no denying that Sonia feared disqualification on the same ground which had led to the exit of Jaya Bachchan from the Rajya Sabha. <b>The rent-a-crowd rallies outside 10 Janpath cannot hide her vulnerability on that score</b>.
Her resignation, most likely to be followed by a quick re-election, could have been a clever strategy had it not been for the ham-handedness of her managers who forced an abrupt end to the budget session of parliament. Never <b>before in the history of parliamentary democracy in this country had any government prorogued sine die both Houses in the midst of an ongoing session only for the purpose of promulgating an ordinance</b>.
The unprecedented move on Thursday would in all probability have gone unchallenged had a newspaper not revealed the crude plot. The last day before the session was to adjourn for a month-long recess led to loud protests by the opposition. It was indeed scandalous that the government of gentleman prime minister should seek to shut out parliament in order only to amend an inconvenient law through an executive fiat.
Obviously, when a gentleman falls in the company of crooks he begins to behave like one. <b>Otherwise, Manmohan Singh cannot explain Jharkhand, Bihar, Goa, Quattrocchi, etc, etc. But even by now familiar low standards of the Manmohan Singh Government, the decision to prorogue the parliament sine die was an assault on established democratic norms</b>. The loud NDA protests were reinforced doubly when the Communists conveyed to the Government their opposition to an ordinance.
Instead, they pressed for a legislative measure to undo the mischief of the provision about the office of profit. Saving the LS Speaker, Somnath Chatterjee, was not a Communist concern, especially given the internal divisions within the CPI(M) Politburo.
<b>With the Communists vetoing the crude stratagem of an ordinance, was clear that the move to abandon parliament mid-way had misfired</b>. The Government cannot have a convincing explanation for its unprecedented action. The <b>resignation of Sonia Gandhi from the LS and other bodies was an afterthought, meant to salvage the situation after the Communist veto</b>.
The sacrifice fiction was <b>the invention of her sycophants who can now be relied upon to make her out to be a Buddha and a Gandhi rolled into one</b>. The route to authoritarianism lies in deifying a mere mortal, especially one carrying an awesome baggage of enormous personal greed and ambition. But it is futile to hope that Congressmen will change their spots. They are, after all, well, Congressmen.
<b>So expect more of staged acts of chest-beating and slogan-shouting outside 10 Janpath in the coming days. The clear victim is the Indian democracy which is never given a chance to protect itself against populist charlatans hell-bent on bending all norms and conventions only to perpetuate themselves in power.</b>
<i>Send in your comments on this article to samachar_editor@sify.com </i><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin--><b>Sacrifice on tap, Sonia style </b>
<b>Sonia Gandhi clearly has a very poor opinion of the collective intelligence of Indians. The claim that her forced resignation from the Lok Sabha is an act of sacrifice is palpably bogus</b>. But this would not prevent her megaphones to shout from the housetops that she has improved upon her earlier allegedly Buddha and Gandhi-like sacrifice of the prime ministerial `gaddiâ by now quitting her Rai Bareilly seat. Such low-level cunning cannot help canonize one in the hall of saints. Her decision to not become prime minister was rooted in her own peculiar situation.
Even if wasnât for her Italian origins, she realized that she lacked confidence and experience to head a difficult coalition of disparate elements. A proxy prime minister suited her rather well. He did all her dirty work, and got blamed for it, while she feigned ignorance, trying to occupy moral high ground. From Goa, Bihar, Jharkhand, Bofors, Quattrocchi, et al, Sonia proposed while Manmohan Singh most obligingly disposed. He was a willing tool in her hand because without her he would be a political cipher.
But the second act in the cheap theatricals is bound to be panned by the nation-wide audiences for the simple reason that it does not even symbolically entail any sacrifice whatsoever. Because she has not quit the Lok Sabha for good. She intends to soon come back to it by contesting the election from the Nehru-Gandhi pocket-borough in UP yet again.
<b>So where the sacrifice? </b>Indeed, her decision to resign her LS seat is a clear admission that she too had come under the mischief of the very law under which her party had earlier arranged to have Jaya Bachchan thrown out of Parliament. Having initiated the move against Jaya Bachchan, Sonia cannot complain that she was being targeted by the Opposition.
<b>There could not be two separate laws one for an opposition MP, and another for the presiding deity of the ruling arrangement.</b>Â <!--emo&:roll--><img src='style_emoticons/<#EMO_DIR#>/ROTFL.gif' border='0' style='vertical-align:middle' alt='ROTFL.gif' /><!--endemo--> Her resignation is an attempt to try and make some political capital out of a decision mandated by her own difficult situation. As the chairperson of the ruling frontâs National Advisory Council she had clearly come under the mischief of the law regarding an office of profit.
Not withstanding what Abhishek Singhvi and other megaphones of the Congress Party said on television, there is no denying that Sonia feared disqualification on the same ground which had led to the exit of Jaya Bachchan from the Rajya Sabha. <b>The rent-a-crowd rallies outside 10 Janpath cannot hide her vulnerability on that score</b>.
Her resignation, most likely to be followed by a quick re-election, could have been a clever strategy had it not been for the ham-handedness of her managers who forced an abrupt end to the budget session of parliament. Never <b>before in the history of parliamentary democracy in this country had any government prorogued sine die both Houses in the midst of an ongoing session only for the purpose of promulgating an ordinance</b>.
The unprecedented move on Thursday would in all probability have gone unchallenged had a newspaper not revealed the crude plot. The last day before the session was to adjourn for a month-long recess led to loud protests by the opposition. It was indeed scandalous that the government of gentleman prime minister should seek to shut out parliament in order only to amend an inconvenient law through an executive fiat.
Obviously, when a gentleman falls in the company of crooks he begins to behave like one. <b>Otherwise, Manmohan Singh cannot explain Jharkhand, Bihar, Goa, Quattrocchi, etc, etc. But even by now familiar low standards of the Manmohan Singh Government, the decision to prorogue the parliament sine die was an assault on established democratic norms</b>. The loud NDA protests were reinforced doubly when the Communists conveyed to the Government their opposition to an ordinance.
Instead, they pressed for a legislative measure to undo the mischief of the provision about the office of profit. Saving the LS Speaker, Somnath Chatterjee, was not a Communist concern, especially given the internal divisions within the CPI(M) Politburo.
<b>With the Communists vetoing the crude stratagem of an ordinance, was clear that the move to abandon parliament mid-way had misfired</b>. The Government cannot have a convincing explanation for its unprecedented action. The <b>resignation of Sonia Gandhi from the LS and other bodies was an afterthought, meant to salvage the situation after the Communist veto</b>.
The sacrifice fiction was <b>the invention of her sycophants who can now be relied upon to make her out to be a Buddha and a Gandhi rolled into one</b>. The route to authoritarianism lies in deifying a mere mortal, especially one carrying an awesome baggage of enormous personal greed and ambition. But it is futile to hope that Congressmen will change their spots. They are, after all, well, Congressmen.
<b>So expect more of staged acts of chest-beating and slogan-shouting outside 10 Janpath in the coming days. The clear victim is the Indian democracy which is never given a chance to protect itself against populist charlatans hell-bent on bending all norms and conventions only to perpetuate themselves in power.</b>
<i>Send in your comments on this article to samachar_editor@sify.com </i><!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->