Congress wants to make a virtue of necessity
The Government's decision to withdraw a controversial ordinance and a Bill, both of which offered protection to convicted lawmakers, is a resounding victory for the people of the country who were outraged by the Congress-led UPA Government's brazen attempt to shield the corrupt. It was the people's powerful voice, heard through the regular and social media, which compelled the Government to retract. The Congress is busy giving credit to its vice president Rahul Gandhi for the reversal by the Central regime. While it's true that the party and the Union Government swung into damage control mode after Mr Gandhi made his famous remark about the ordinance being a piece of “nonsense” and deserving to be “torn up and thrown away”, the Congress must remember that Mr Gandhi's grandstanding came after he realised that the public mood had turned not just against the ordinance but also against the party which had initially cleared the law in its core committee meeting, and which had no problem when the ordinance went to the President for his approval. Not just that, the Congress had even piloted a Bill which would have replaced the ordinance in due course of time, with provisions similar to that in the ordinance. Mr Gandhi had silently watched these developments. It’s only when it became clear that even the President had strong reservations about the ordinance and was not inclined to sign it, that Mr Gandhi erupted. The party vice president may have upstaged Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and established, if ever there was any doubt, that he is the real boss even when it comes to matters of Government policy. But, while his efforts to derive personal political mileage may have succeeded to an extent, it has come at the expense of the Prime Minister's prestige. Mr Singh is now looking more vulnerable than before. Those who had believed that the Prime Minister would take a tough stand and say ‘enough is enough' to the Congress's first family, seemed to have forgotten his past submissive conduct. Mr Singh has admitted that he does not get upset easily as he has developed a thick skin. That quality does not deserve merit in the situation at hand.
The UPA regime had been completely isolated over the ordinance, with the Bharatiya Janata Party and several non-UPA parties taking it to task. The BJP even petitioned the President against the ordinance, with its senior leaders calling the law “morally, politically and constitutionally wrong”. Pushed to the wall, the Congress has tried in vain to implicate the BJP by claiming that the principal Opposition had initially supported the the Bill on providing shelter to convicted lawmakers. But Congress leaders forget that the Bill was referred to a parliamentary panel because the BJP had strongly objected to it.
Since all is well that ends well, we must hope that our lawmakers will not take any more foolish steps to protect the convicted among them. The Supreme Court had on July 10 struck down as “unconstitutional” Section 8(4) of the Representation of the People Act, which provided relief to convicted MPs and MlAs. It had also dismissed a review plea by the Government seeking the court's reconsideration of the earlier verdict. This is where matters must now rest.