From her election campaign speeches, it is clear Ms. Sonia Gandhi has not learned yet the basic nuances of democracy. For instance, she slams the BJP for picking on Dr. Manmohan Singh. According to her, Dr. Singh is the Prime Minister, and hence a leader of the country, and not a leader of a party.

Strange logic for the Congress party has projected Dr. Manmohan Singh as its prime ministerial candidate, why should the Opposition keep him above party politics? As Prime Minister, Dr. Singh is free to attack Mr. Advani and free to canvass for Congress candidates. If he is only the leader of the country, he should canvass for all candidates or refrain from canvassing.

Proxy PM

Ms. Sonia Gandhi is unable to clearly demarcate the party and the Government. As a prime ministerial candidate, Dr. Singh is a candidate of the Congress Party, and will be treated as such. The focus of attack must be on Dr. Singh who was Proxy PM for five years.

That he misled Parliament is not a joke; that he was engrossed for four full years with the Indo-US nuclear deal and at the end of it came home with a good conduct certificate from President Bush! That he is the weakest Prime Minister India ever had is a fact. It was he who confessed he was out of the loop when Octavio Quattrocchi was allowed to flee with the Bofors kickbacks.

It hurts Ms. Sonia Gandhi because she weakened him; she purposely chose someone weak, who could be manipulated. Why didn’t she pick Mr. Pranab Mukherjee? When it came to stalling the Opposition attacks and answering questions, the Congress fielded the same Pranab Mukherjee! An attack on Manmohan Singh is an attack on the party to which he belongs. An attack on Manmohan Singh is an attack on Sonia Gandhi for whom he was/is the proxy.

Did Dr. Manmohan Singh seek the mandate of the people via the usual democratic process? Even now he is refusing to face the electorate, though he boasts that the UPA government has fulfilled 85 percent of its promises. Why doesn’t he go to the people and seek a mandate on his success story? He is Sonia’s-handpicked man, brought in by the backdoor to simulate a make-believe democracy. An attack on the PM is no attack on the people of this country as stated by Sonia Gandhi.

By this logic, an attack on Mr. Narendra Modi, elected Chief Minister of Gujarat, is attack on the people of Gujarat. An attack on Mr. L.K. Advani, Leader of the Opposition, is an attack on those who voted him as their leader.

In the case of Dr. Manmohan Singh, Ms. Sonia Gandhi selected him; he was not elected by the people; so how can she say that an attack on him is an attack on the people of this nation? Ms. Gandhi seems to think she has the copyright to criticize Mr. Advani, but the latter does not have the right to point out the biggest political failure the UPA committed – it inflicted a weak PM on the country.


Terrorism under NDA and UPA

This discredit goes politically and personally to Ms. Sonia Gandhi. She has been claiming that when Mr. Advani was Union Home Minister, there were a number of serial bomb blasts across the country and Parliament was attacked. As Congress president, she should have got her statistics right. How many serial blasts occurred during BJP rule and how many occurred during UPA rule?

Yes, Parliament was attacked and for that reason the BJP was pulled down from power. Sonia Gandhi seems to be stuck with Kandahar when a planeload of innocent people were held hostages. Release of four terrorists in exchange was the demand. Justice demands that there can be no punishment twice for the same failure. For the attack on Parliament, BJP was ousted and the UPA government came in, but what has UPA to show that terrorists were on the run?

Fourteen serial blasts occurred across the country; in Delhi, the Union Home Minister changed his clothes before visiting each blast site! The Mumbai bloodbath saw Sonia Gandhi spouting hollow pieties, “we will not kneel before the terrorists.” It was not the intention of the terrorists to make others kneel - they wanted to massacre people and bleed this nation and that’s precisely what they achieved.

One Mumbai itself is an indictment of the UPA, because Home Minister Chidambaram conceded it was a failure on the part of the government, which failed to pick up the intelligence inputs. He promised such dastardly acts would be prevented. The comfort offered to the people was the setting up of a Federal agency. Ms. Gandhi has no moral right to condemn the BJP government for the terrorism that Congress encouraged through its appeasement policy, by communalizing every area of the polity and the people.

Can Sonia recall a single nation in the world where the country’s national flag is burned and the Government just looks the other way? She once called Mr. Vajpayee a traitor and tagged Mr. Modi as a merchant of death. The Congress president forgets that Congress’ hand is bloodied with the blood of 3000 Sikhs. Yet it the Gujarat riots in which around 1100 died is a case study for Congress.

In 1984, the Congress under Rajiv Gandhi simply allowed a carnage in the capital for three days; he spewed venom by justifying it by stating that when a large tree falls, the ground around it shakes. This is the party which points an accusing finger at Mr. Modi and the BJP; a classic case of the pot calling the kettle black.

Rahul: the Poverty PM

Rahul Gandhi, projected as a future Prime Minister of India by the Congress party, does not even have a basic understanding of the country - demographically, politically, economically, and socially. Hence he discovered a poor scheduled caste woman in his constituency and it made media news! What a great discovery.

Then he took a British MP to peep into a cowshed to give him an idea of rural India. The blind leading the blind too makes headlines. Now we have him assert that even if there is a single poor person in India, the party will stand/fight for him. Poor Rahul Gandhi; does he know the percentage of persons Below the Poverty Line; does he know the measurements used to identify the PL and what it means in absolute numbers? Is he aware that the party and family to which he belongs has been using the poor only for sloganeering for the longest period in democratic India, and the result is the increase of poverty? Has he read the 20 point programme his grandmother ushered in with great promise of green pastures, her ‘Garibi Haato’ slogan to drive out poverty?

All the time, poverty was seeping in. His father with ‘power to the people’ and the vision for the 21st century, saw many households falling below poverty line while Mr. Quattrocchi and his ilk fleeced the country His mother, Sonia, rechristened the National Rural Employment Programme and the Integrated Rural Development Programme as the National Rural Employment Guarantee Programme and held it out as the magic wand to wish away rural poverty for the aam admi. All the time, the farmers’ suicide rates were steadily rising.

Now Rahul Gandhi promises to stand for the poor even if it is a single person. What a fantasy! Is this Alice in Wonderland that he is reading, nay, reeling out to us? It is now youth power, but poor Manmohan Singh is the man who is the prime ministerial candidate for the Congress because according to Rahul Gandhi, he is young in mind! Everything to suit their perception and mindset!

Rahul Gandhi cannot understand that the Gandhi family perception is not the perception held by one billion people of India. The people live in reality and not in fantasies. India is no pocket borough of the Gandhi family. The Election Commission ups its antenna and attunes it to other politicians, but not on Manmohan Singh, who has raked up the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Is that not communal?

Congress has promised reservation on the basis of religion; is that not communal? Why is the Election Commission silent? For four acts of betrayal the Congress should be defeated:-
1] Abetment of terrorism
2] Massacre of Sikhs
3] Burning of the national flag in Kashmir; and
4] The ominous ethnic cleansing of Hindus in J&K.

Rape vs Rapes

Manmohan Singh who said the Kandhamal rape of a nun is a blot on the nation should realize that after the genocide of innocent Sikhs and the rape of Sikh girls, the Congress Party has no legitimacy to point at one rape. Every Congress man/woman is stuck with the Gujarat riots and the violation of human rights. Indian democracy did not start in 2003.Why should the Sikh genocide be covered up? Why should the party not be answerable for breaking the Babri Masjid locks and communalizing the polity? The Congress which had no hesitation in clamping Emergency and kept Constitutional rights in abeyance cannot be entrusted with upholding the Constitutional rights of the people. 

The Union territory of Delhi has a Congress government in power, but is the most unsafe State in India for women and children. If one rape is a blot on the nation, what of the hundreds of rapes of minors and women?

Minorityism runs riot

Congress has taken minorityism to an unimaginable low, creating a separate ministry; its secular credentials mean subsidizing the Haj to guarantee the salvation of Muslims with taxpayer money. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh said Muslims have the first claim on national resources; but Congress erected permanent walls of ghettos for minorities and called them votebanks.

Till date the party has not brought to justice a single terrorist; Afzal Guru is kept safe with taxpayer money. Being in power for the longest period in democratic India, it divided the people into segments of caste and creed; every action and inaction of the Congress was based on abetting distrust and hatred among Indians, polarizing communities on the basis of religion, pitting one community against the other.

One people, one nation, and one flag has been shredded and torn apart by the Congress. It has sins to repent for, sins to make amends for, and sins which cannot be forgiven for these have scarred, dented and crippled the nation. For these and many other omissions not mentioned here, Indians should recognize the Congress as a party of deception and vile intent. 

India cannot be safe in the hands of a certified Indian citizen who may well be holding the citizenship of Italy also. India’s destiny should not be entrusted to such a HAND.

The author is a retired Professor from Stella Maris College, Chennai, and lives in Vadodara