Archive for May 2007
Anything but People’s Choice
Are we a true democracy? Are the elected representatives who sit in the lower house of the parliament and state assemblies expected to take actions that are in tune with what the citizens of the country wish?
If your answers are ‘yes’, you are living in a different era. If you have been reading your morning papers, you would surely know that President APJ Abdul Kalam Azad is almost out of the race for a second term. And this when there is huge wave of support in his favour. Kalam has always been a popular President. People see him as someone who is progressive and approachable. He is not the typical ribbon-cutting president. May be this is what the political parties don’t like about him. Our corrupt politicians would like a politician to occupy that chair – so that they can carry on with their ‘hawalas’ and reverse discriminations laws without anyone expressing concern.
The communists, who have never done anything that seems logical or what seems in the interest of the people, were the first to declare that they will not support Kalam for a second term. They want that the nominee should also be “strongly secular to uphold the secular principles of the Indian state”. Does this mean that our scientist president doesn’t have secular credentials? But then what do you expect from a bunch of regressive leftists. News channels CNN-IBN, IBN7 and IBN-LIVE in association with Loksatta and The Indian Express conducted an online poll to determine the people’s choice for the first citizen of India. The results surprised nobody. See for yourself:
Poll Results data taken from: www.ibnlive.com
Others include Amitabh Bachchan(1.44%), Karan Singh(0.57%), Somnath Chatterjee(3.32%), Pranab Mukherjee(1.32%) and Sushil Kumar Shinde (2.09%)
But as always, what people want will matter to not a single political parties and upholding the democratic credentials of this country, they will thrust some pseudo-secular politician on the citizens of India as their 12th President.
On the day he moves out of Rashtrapati Bhavan, I will have only these parting words for him:
President Kalam, You were a great President. For once, we didn’t feel that our president was a weak, old man who had no mind of his own. You were never a dummy head of state but you know what – our leaders want only rubber-stamps. Thank You Sir for everything!