[Reader-list] wishful daydreaming in divided polity.?

[Rakesh Iyer]

 Dear all

I don't understand why did people become so surprised when Manmohan Singh
called the Left's bluff by means of political gamesmanship and Samajwadi's
party support to get his govt. through on the July 22 trust vote. After all,
Manmohan Singh was, is and will be a politician. Yes, he may be loyal to the
Gandhi family, but he is a politician. Otherwise, neither would he have been
the Finance Minister (one of the most important ministries in the Central
Govt.) under the Narasimha rao regime, nor would he have been the Prime
Minister of the UPA regime.

Secondly, I think we have taken this 'weak PM' tag too far. First of all,
after Narasimha Rao, I don't think there have been PM's who have been
strong. One can argue that Vajpayee was strong, but then there were numerous
occasions when he was short changed by RSS. There are many unofficial
reports to this case, and one mustn't forget that Vajpayee had to accede to
many requests by the RSS and also vice versa.

The same has happened with Manmohan Singh as well. There are many here who
would believe that Manmohan is weak because Sonia takes the decisions. In
that case, I would like to know why was Sonia ready to sacrifice the UPA
regime at the insistence of Manmohan, for the Indo-US nuclear deal? The deal
would not have been operational even till the end of the UPA regime (as it
turns out now), and no US company has got any contract for nuclear power
plant or anything related to it.

May be on Quattrochi issue Manmohan was indeed weak, but what about the
weakness of Vajpayee at the time of Kandahar? What about his weakness when
women were being raped in Gujarat to take 'revenge for Godhra'? What about
his weakness when on the basis of just one confession (of Afzal), India went
to a near war with Pakistan and lost soldiers in substantial number without
even fighting a war? Where was his courage after the Parliament attack? Can
our nationalist brothers on this forum answer?

Even the investigation into the attack was not carried out properly. Can you
even tell me the names of those 5 people who attacked the Parliament? And
there were news reports that actually 6 attacked the parliament, but only 5
were shot down. Where is the 6th?

Everybody talks about Afzal hanging. If Vajpayee had great courage, he could
have shown action to his words 'aar paar ki ladai'. And now we have Advani
who even has written that he has no connection with the Kandahar hijack and
the decision to release the three terrorists. Great. Then how did the govt.
function during the NDA regime? And this is coming from a man who later
became the Deputy PM. What qualification did such a man have to become the
deputy PM?

Few points to ponder about.

What we need is a strong govt which has some proper ethical values on which
it takes decisions, not one which takes decisions based on corrupt and money
minded ways without caring for the people at large. Not a khichdi sarkaar
which will be more concerned with their own stability rather than the
stability of the South Asian region which can bring prosperity, peace and
happiness to the people directly and indirectly.

And both the BJP and the Congress are incapable of giving that even if they
had an absolute majority of their own.

Regards

Rakesh