11-29-2006, 11:47 PM
<b>Not nice Once again, Sonia Gandhi has shown down the PM</b>.<!--QuoteBegin-->QUOTE<!--QuoteEBegin-->Looking back, it is hard to find an Indira Gandhi 1969 parallel here with Sonia Gandhi. She tried with Sitaram Kesri after Narasimha Rao. He was ignoble. In 2004, denied or relinquishing the primeministership, whatever, Sonia stayed out in the party to control the government. First, it was formal informal control as chairperson of the National Advisory Council. When she had to quit that as well, she remained truly out of the government, but ironically, truly in as well.
That she is super PM is not in doubt. But her outside control of government, the opposite way of Nehru or Indira Gandhi, is extreme, and is undermining it. On FTA, there was a needless controversy in which the PM was demeaned. On SEZs, she correctly woke up to the scam in farming lands. But couldn't she have pressured the government from within? It's after all her own chosen PM. On FDI in higher education, she trumps the government, or rather, Arjun Singh. Did she hear him out? Even if she had to do what she did, couldn't she have done it quietly? On the petrol/ diesel price cut, she has got the PM and petroleum minister red-faced. Why embarrass the government?
It's either one or the other extreme. It's never been harmonious government-party relations. Perhaps it is utopian. In the established democracies of Britain and America, there is tension between the ruling party and government. But it's never so played out. What, ultimately, is Sonia getting out of showing down her PM and government? That she is the super PM? That she counts and no one else? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->
That she is super PM is not in doubt. But her outside control of government, the opposite way of Nehru or Indira Gandhi, is extreme, and is undermining it. On FTA, there was a needless controversy in which the PM was demeaned. On SEZs, she correctly woke up to the scam in farming lands. But couldn't she have pressured the government from within? It's after all her own chosen PM. On FDI in higher education, she trumps the government, or rather, Arjun Singh. Did she hear him out? Even if she had to do what she did, couldn't she have done it quietly? On the petrol/ diesel price cut, she has got the PM and petroleum minister red-faced. Why embarrass the government?
It's either one or the other extreme. It's never been harmonious government-party relations. Perhaps it is utopian. In the established democracies of Britain and America, there is tension between the ruling party and government. But it's never so played out. What, ultimately, is Sonia getting out of showing down her PM and government? That she is the super PM? That she counts and no one else? <!--QuoteEnd--><!--QuoteEEnd-->