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Rahul Gandhi trashes ordinance, shames government
-The Times of India


NEW DELHI: Rahul Gandhi on Friday announced his emergence as the new Congress boss rejecting as "complete nonsense" the ordinance to save convicted legislators from disqualification. In a powerful intervention he sealed the fate of the contentious legislation, embarrassed PM Manmohan Singh hours before his meeting with Barack Obama in Washington DC and publicly rebuked the party old guard.

"I'll tell you what my opinion on the ordinance is. It's complete nonsense. It should be torn up and thrown away. That is my personal opinion," Rahul said, stunning his audience at a press meet where he made a surprise entry.

He repeated the comment for emphasis and followed that up by attacking the government for persisting with efforts to bring the ordinance. "I am interested in what the Congress is doing and what our government is doing. That is why what our government has done as far as this ordinance is concerned is wrong," said the Congress vice-president who, it later transpired, had written to the PM to express his displeasure.

Although Rahul had taken care to be respectful in his letter to the PM, his rebuke at the press meet didn't take away from the perception that the criticism had undermined Singh's authority.

Rahul's public censure of his own government led the party and the government to do a somersault on the ordinance, amplifying the message of Rahul's ascendancy.

It jarred with the alacrity with which the Cabinet cleared the ordinance on Tuesday, and with the painstaking advocacy for it by senior ministers like finance minister P Chidambaram and law minister Kapil Sibal. In fact, the decision was cleared by the Congress's core group which includes the PM and Sonia Gandhi. But Friday found minister after minister joining the chorus against it and the opposition calling for Singh's resignation.

The ordinance, which is pending with President Pranab Mukherjee, is likely to die a natural death with the PM indicating from Washington that the Cabinet would seek its withdrawal after his return next week.

The party expects that the President, who met leaders of the Aam Aadmi Party on Friday, will neither promulgate the ordinance nor embarrass the government by sending it back for reconsideration.

The PM appeared to have taken the Rahul rebuke in his stride, saying, "The issues raised will be considered on my return to India after due deliberations in the Cabinet" (see accompanying report).

Coming against the backdrop of growing concern in the party over the adverse fallout of the "save-the-convicted" ordinance, the tough comment marked a daring, if rather belated, effort to salvage matters for the party which is reeling under charges of corruption. Sources said Rahul, who first signalled his disquiet with the ordinance by refusing to speak about it on Wednesday while interacting with journalists in Pune, had grown more wary of the repercussions.

But given that the government and the party had vigorously defended the ordinance since the Cabinet cleared it on Tuesday and that Rahul was not supposed to be at the media event, the young leader's dramatic performance marked an ambush of the Congress old guard; a ruthless projection of power by the Gandhi-Nehru scion who revels in his aloofness from decision-making.

Rahul made no effort to hide his disagreement with the party, confirming that the decision to bring the ordinance in defiance of the resistance was motivated by political considerations: a reference to help allies like Lalu Prasad who runs the risk of conviction.

Unabashedly disclosing in-house deliberations, he said: "The argument being made is that we need to do this because of political considerations. Everybody does this. The Congress does this, the BJP does this, the Janata Dal does this, the Samajwadi Party does this. It is time to stop this nonsense, political parties, mine and all others... If you want to fight corruption in the country, whether it is Congress or BJP, we cannot continue making these small compromises. Because if we make these small compromises, then we compromise everywhere."

The attempt to break away from the old guard was in line with Rahul's script to play the outsider, only this time he went to unusual lengths.

Congress chief spokesperson Ajay Maken was busy defending the ordinance when Rahul hijacked the platform to tear it to shreds. Minutes after Rahul left, Maken changed his tune saying Rahul's views were the party's views and it was virtually the end of the ordinance. "He is our leader and when he has aired his views those become the views of the party": the remark powerfully emphasizing the shift of power within the party. Those like junior HRD minister Shashi Tharoor immediately echoed the "new line".

While Rahul had begun to acquire powers and assert himself, he was doing it subtly and incrementally, leading observers to liken his style to "creeping acquisition". Given that, the public display of authority on Friday marked an attitudinal change and a leap forward.

There were doubts about whether the audacious assertion will fly with people at large, especially with the opposition rubbing in that the Congress vice-president stepped in only because he feared a popular backlash. The argument of Rahul partisans that he, being a member of neither the Cabinet nor the core group, was not a party to the decision met with scepticism, considering that the law to protect convicted lawmakers had been in the making since July when the Supreme Court struck down the immunity to them. In fact, a bill for the purpose was introduced in the Rajya Sabha in the recently concluded monsoon session, and has been awaiting the clearance of the standing committee.