New Delhi, Dec 3 (IANS) Keeping open the possibility of his emerging as Bharatiya Janata Party’s (BJP) prime ministerial candidate in the next general elections, party veteran L.K. Advani Saturday blamed Prime Minister Manmohan Singh for not being able to ‘exercise all authority’ as head of the government.
Responding to questions after his address on ‘India’s Yatra into the Future’ at the Hindustan Times Leadership Summit here, Advani said he had many times given his assessment of Manmohan Singh as a weak prime minister.
‘Many people say what you had said earlier has proved correct now,’ Advani said.
‘Today, I would say one reason why prime minister has not been able to exercise all authority in office was his acceptance of communist model of government… that party chief is more important than prime minister or president,’ Advani said.
Answering queries about his being the party’s prime ministerial candidate in the next Lok Sabha polls, Advani said it was for the party to take a decision.
‘(It is) for the party to decide. I don’t decide,’ he said.
He added that accepting such a role will also depend on his ‘inclination’ and ‘health at that point of time’.
Cautioning against ‘blind imitation’ of the West’s model of development, he said the United Progressive Alliance (UPA) government was fooling people by claiming that foreign direct investment (FDI) in retail will create millions of jobs and bring down inflation.
‘Today’s India is more iniquitous than ever before. A small section of our society has become immensely prosperous in recent years, leaving the majority far behind in terms of access to education, healthcare, housing and even something as basic as clean drinking water,’ he said.
Advani played down a question about the National Democratic Alliance’s (NDA) manifesto for 2004 elections having promised 26 percent FDI in retail.
‘To the best of my recollection, BJP’s own approach in terms of FDI in retail has always been opposed to it. I do not exactly recollect how NDA document came up,’ he said.
Attacking Congress president Sonia Gandhi, Advani said: ‘You can’t have a person whom you don’t know as a number one.’
‘I am yet to come across a journalist or a bureaucrat who had occasion to interact with her at some length,’ Advani added.
Showering Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi with praises like ‘remarkable administrator’ and ‘excellent political leader’, Advani said: ‘He has been maligned consistently. I have not seen any other leader as much maligned as Modi.’
He said performance of the government had created ‘a deep sense of uncertainty’ and it may not last its full term.
In his address, Advani said that BJP’s slogan of ‘India Shining’ in 2004 elections was not what he had intended it to be.
‘When I took out the Bharat Uday Yatra in 2004, many of those who are in government criticised me for making claims about ‘Shining India’. I made no claims about shining India. My claim was about ‘Rising India’, which is the correct translation of ‘Bharat Uday’. My mistake was that I allowed it to be translated as ‘India Shining’,’ he said.
Advani said country’s rank had been going down over the past three years in the corruption perception index of Transparency International and added that good governance and corruption cannot co-exist.
‘Similarly, democracy and dynastic succession also cannot co-exist.
‘Good governance, clean politics as well as sound democracy should become the watchwords for India’s yatra into future,’ he added.
Describing himself as a ‘perennial yatri’, Advani said all his six yatras have been invaluable education for him.
He said that Ram Rath Yatra of 1990 had questioned some of the basic assumptions and practices in the ‘name of secularism’.
Advani said while 2G spectrum controversy, with its estimated loss of a revenue of Rs.1,76,000 crore was a huge scam, cash-for-votes scandal had more malignant consequences.
‘As many as 19 opposition MPs were bribed with crores and made to vote for government,’ he said.
He said cash-for-votes scam was the trigger for his Jan Chetna Yatra and party functionaries who had acted as ‘whistleblowers’ had been targeted.
