Sonia And Media (Indolink.com, 19/05/04)

-- By Dasu Krishnamoorty

Sonia Gandhi has declined to assume the highest office in the country. Here are the views of the Indian media on Tuesday (18 May) and facts relating to her decision:

View: The Hindu called it an extraordinary act of renunciation. If she had wanted power, she could have done so in 1999 in the ‘highly abnormal conditions following her husband’s assassination.’ The Hindu said that Sonia wanted to demonstrate that the post of the prime minister was never her aim. Two: ‘She does not wish to be the cause of, or pretext for, confrontation and ugly chauvinistic politics.’ Three: ‘And finally, there are the personal considerations.’

Fact: She did accept the Congress Parliamentary Party’s nomination as leader and proceeded to Rashtrapati Bhavan to stake her claim. This contradicts The Hindu’s first point. Two: The ‘confrontation and ugly chauvinistic politics’ were there from the beginning and did not show their ugly face just at the time of her election as leader. Three: ‘The personal considerations’ could be one of the reasons and not the sole reason. If we accept this third explanation we will have to accept that what Sonia did was not an act of courage but prudence.

View: The Hindu said, ‘Ms. Gandhi’s stunning act of self-denial and political renunciation cannot be allowed to be seen as an endorsement of the vicious campaign that the Sushma Swarajs, the Uma Bhartis, the Govindacharyas and the rest of the sangh parivar have launched to block the electoral verdict.’

Fact: The electoral verdict was not in favor of Congress or Congress and its allies. Together, they won 217 seats that fall short of 272 by 45. The verdict did not favor any party or alliance.

View: Deccan Herald and the Indian Express also referred to the anti-foreigner issue and described the BJP campaign as lacking in grace. Herald said, ‘Her decision may be criticized as a sign of weakness and surrender to the irrational campaign launched by the BJP on the issue of her foreign origin. She may perhaps have taken the decision in response to the security concerns of the members of her family.’ BJP must be graceful in defeat, said The Indian Express editorial.

Fact: In any mass campaign of any party, some unruly elements capture the space. Atal Behari Vajpayee and Venkiah Naidu admonished both Narendra Modi and Pramod Mahajan for crossing the limits of decency. The word defeat applies to both the BJP and the Congress. What grace did Congress show to Amar Singh? Did such niceties ever enter the dictionaries of political parties?

View: The Indian Express said, ‘The BJP, which discovered its oxygen supply shut down by the country’s voters, is today in a desperate search for relevance.’ Referring to BJP’s anti-foreigner drive, The Express said, ‘The idea is to ignite an incendiary sense of disgust in the public. The timing of this particular campaign is spectacularly wrong. So, the BJP must be graceful in defeat. They can oppose Sonia Gandhi, by all means, but they must do so politically – according to the rules of Indian democracy.’

Fact: The oxygen supply is shut down to Congress also, which won just seven more seats than the BJP. In this election there are no winners or losers. Whoever mobilizes the magic figure of 272 is the winner and this has nothing to do with the people’s verdict. To say that there was timing is incorrect because, opposition to a foreign-born person becoming the PM has been part of BJP’s program for a long time. As a matter of fact, Vir Sanghvi of The Hindustan Times said in an editorial, ‘She has messed up the timing of her announcement (to head the government). If Ms. Gandhi had made her intentions clear from the very beginning, her noble, brave self-decision would have had a greater impact.’

Rules of Indian democracy are enshrined in the Constitution that (Art 102) says, ‘A person shall be disqualified for being chosen as, and for being, a member of either House of Parliament – (d) if he or she is under any acknowledgement of allegiance or adherence to a foreign state.’ Art.103 says, ‘The President is the sole adjudicator on the issue who has to decide on such matter in consultation with the Election Commission.’ There is also Sec. 5 of the Citizenship Act, dealing with the reciprocity clause for a person who has registered herself/himself as an Indian citizen. It says that the said person could not enjoy more rights than those available to an Indian-born person in that other country if he/she acquires citizenship of that country. Apart from that, the press, not being a democratic institution, has little right to tell political parties which have just participated in the world’s biggest electoral exercise.

Two newspapers, The Pioneer and The Deccan Chronicle have referred to President Abdul Kalam as pointing out the legal problems in inviting a foreign-born person to form the government. Rashtrapati Bhavan immediately denied the reports. Two other reports indicate that official denials in fact confirm what they are denying. One is about the meeting of Subramanian Swami, Uma Bharathi and Sushma Swaraj calling on the President separately and conveying to him the unconstitutionality of inviting a foreign-born person. The second is a public interest petition filed in the Supreme Court challenging the right of a foreign-born person. The Supreme Court is hearing the petition on 24 May. Now, it is difficult to believe that the President had not mentioned this to Ms. Gandhi, especially against the background of her leaving Rashtrapati Bhavan empty-handed.

View: In an editorial, The Telegraph said, ‘By refusing to be prime minister, Ms. Gandhi has written herself into Indian history as a woman of courage and determination. Ms. Gandhi proved to her enemies that the people of India had no objections to accepting her as the prime minister. The real reasons for her renunciation will perhaps never be known. At the political level, she sought to make the Congress a bastion of secularism.’

Fact: The manner in which she single-handedly turned the electoral tide in favor of the Congress proves that she indeed is a woman of courage and determination. But she has not renounced something that is already hers. People could not have objected because the Congress never projected her as prime ministerial candidate, despite taunts from the BJP side. The party never revealed its cards. The real reasons for her renunciation concern either her ineligibility to become PM or her children’s concern for her safety or both. About Congress secularism, Arundhati Roy has this to say, ‘But even as we celebrate, we know that on every major issue besides overt Hindu nationalism (nuclear bombs, big dams and privatization), the Congress and the BJP have no major ideological differences.’