[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by ehsan: *
I heard on star news that Sonia has said she will make the final decision tomorrow. This was after the party put her under a lot of pressure to reconsider her earlier decision to step down.
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I hope she doesnt do it.If she has announced she doesnt want to be PM she should stick to it.This will give those Idiots another reason to attack her.
First Foreign-Born Premier
By Gwynne Dyer
India has its first foreign-born prime minister. Sonia Gandhi, born 57 years ago in the village of Orbassano, not far from Milan, is going to be the leader of the world’s largest democracy and its second-largest country, even though her Hindi is still Italian-accented and her religion is Catholic. And all the people who voted for her knew that.
This could never happen in the United States, where the president must be native born. (The Founding Fathers foresaw the danger of a Schwarzenegger presidency.) It has happened a few times in Canada, Australia and New Zealand, but it has never happened in Europe, in Africa, or elsewhere in Asia. India is turning out to be a very interesting place.
You can imagine a non-white woman as prime minister in Canada or even in Britain or France in the next twenty years; they have all had women prime ministers already, and most of the urban under-40s are virtually colour-blind. The United States may get a woman president in 2008 (her name is Hillary), and Colin Powell’s colour would not have been a fatal impediment if he had chosen to run for president in 2000. **
But Sonia Gandhi is the wrong colour, the wrong sex, the wrong language, the wrong religion – and Indians still voted for her.
**
It was magnificent, and all the more so because they were consciously rejecting the racist and sectarian incitements of the ruling Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP), a Hindu nationalist party that deliberately targets minorities. The BJP’s rallies regularly trotted out Narendra Modi, a hardline Hindu preacher turned politician who was reelected by a landslide in Gujarat in 2002 after the slaughter of at least a thousand Muslims earlier in the year. But this month the BJP in Gujarat lost six of its twenty seats in the national parliament.
Former prime minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee tried to moderate the BJP’s sectarian message to win support from India’s Muslims, Sikhs, and Christians, and from the 180 millions Dalits (untouchables) who are excluded by orthodox Hinduism, but he couldn’t pry them away from their traditional loyalty to Mrs. Gandhi’s Congress Party. By courting non-Hindus, however, he alienated his core supporters, the ‘Hindutva’ fanatics of the paramilitary Rashtriya Swayamsewak Sangh (RSS-National Volunteer Corps) and the Vishwa Hindu Parishad (VHP-World Hindu Congress), who stayed away from his election campaign in droves.
So Congress and its allies won a majority of the seats in the Lok Sabha (parliament), to the astonishment of all the analysts. Urban India has done well under the BJP – an 8 percent economic growth rate last year – but the rural areas were left behind. Congress’s key election promise was that one member of each rural household will have a job for 100 days a year. It may be a hard promise to keep, but it did the trick.
With the support of the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which has long ruled West Bengal in a distinctly non-Marxist style, Congress will form India’s next government – and Sonia Gandhi will be prime minister.
“I never felt they look at me as a foreigner,” Sonia Gandhi said recently, “because I am not. I am Indian.” She is Indian because she has lived there for 36 years, since she was 21; because her mother-in-law and her husband were both assassinated while serving India; and because she became an Indian citizen twenty years ago. She belongs there, in most Indians’ eyes, and the BJP’s racist complaints about her birthplace – “the high offices of the country should be held by people of Indian origin,” said BJP president Venkaiah Naidu – have been rejected by Indian voters.
A Congress-led government will probably cool down the urban boom while it concentrates on providing electricity, clean water and roads to the several hundred million rural poor who felt left out by the BJP’s pro-urban, pro-middle class policies. But despite the current stock market panic, Congress will not abandon economic liberalization; it was a Congress government that launched that policy in 1991.
http://www.tehrantimes.com/Description.asp?Da=5/18/2004&Cat=14&Num=001
These Irani journalists are a bit behind in this whole episode, it seems.
Although it's a very tough decision, those BJP members need to act civilized. They are just ghunday, who want everything done their way only.
Sonia Gandhi is not a corrupt leader. She has proved before and again that she's not power hungry. She was the only reason people voted for Congress.
By dropping out of the Prime Minister position, it will be a victory for BJP, and the world's biggest democracy doesn't meet up to its name.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by fair_&_balance: *
This is slap on face of BJP's croonies like Sushma Swaraj and Uma Bharti.
They were feeling ashamed that Sonia "A foreigner " will become PM.
But they were never ashamed when
Modi was killing 1000s of people.No one ask for even his resignation.
When they were doing striptease in Ayodhya against Supreme Court Order.
3.When they share Parliament with likes of Phoolan Devi,D P Yadav and Pappu Yadav.
This is hight of hypocracy.
[/QUOTE]
I fully agree. Bharti/Swaraj have egos that are bigger than any following they have. I can't believe Swaraj met the president to protest against Sonia being the PM. If I was Kalam, I would have asked the guards to chase her away from the gate. But India being the democracy it is..even things that are perfectly constitutional can be disputed...
Bharti/Swaraj should be locked in a room together with Modi for the rest of their lives...and yes a book of Kamasutra should be slipped under the door...Indian politics will be much cleaner without these racist arseholes.
I am however grateful that Sonia walked away from the PM's post. Her being the PM would have given too much fodder to the right wingers..and the Government would have wasted too much time defending Sonia from personal attacks. Ironically, if anyone should be sad at Sonia's decision, it should be the BJP, not the Congress.
1- BJP cannot accept its defeat (Its still in denial).
2- BJP will move mountains to derail this Coalition Government. Dont be surprised if we have another election in another 2 years.
3- Just wait here comes the Babri Masjid issue (Remember the demolition while in the opposition, and then the secular view while in Power, We will obey the Court Rulings, blah blah blah).
4- India Shining was just a Slogan, like many of you agree it was Manmohan Singh who started the reforms, I believe he is the best Candidate for PM.
5- Sonia Gandhi Voice of Conscience, yes very much so, she got the Party into power, and now Humbly declines PM role, knowing very well BJP will make every Parliamentry session a Living Hell.
Bottom line I would rather have had BJP in power,
to avoid any Communal problems,
to avoid the joke that Parliament is going to be,
to avoid spending another Stupendous amount of money for elections a few years down the road,
to avoid the RSS/Shiv Sena and their likes from spewing Venom, against minorities,
to avoid then demise of the Congress party for ever.
How I wish the Congress had won by a Majority, then it would have been a better situation, eventually the Partners will find something lacking and then what?? you think they wont use any arm twisting tactics??
Whats your take???
Thats what Modi has been praying for all his life!!!
I am a congress supporter and I am glad that BJP lost. Sonia is responsible for this and hence I am personally ok with her becoming the PM. And, her reputation can only soar. BUT, I realise that, this is a compromise I am willing to make, for a lesser evil. One should be dispassionate while discussing constituional/ legal issues.
Yes, the consitution does not stop her, simply because it didn't anticipate such a situation. (America, being a nation of emigrants, anticipated this and hence they have forbidden a 'foreigner' from taking up constitutional posts.)
But, the same constiturion says there is a big difference between Sonia's citizenship and mine. I can commit the most heinous of crimes, you can sentence me to death, but no power on earth can take away my citizenship. But in the case of 'naturalised citizens', the state can take away the citizenship that it had bestowed. So, all 'citizens' are not necessarily equal.
Apparently, there is a further complication for naturalised citizens. Their rights are limited based on the extent the parent country (Italy in Sonia's case) treats an Indian who takes up Italian citizenship. The logic is fair, I think, though nobody seems to know the situation with Italy.
imagine italian origin negotiating issue of kashmir with indian origin musharuff and both of them non-kashmiris.
Minority members in nation's two top posts
Reflecting India's secularism, the country will now have members of the minority community holding the nation's two top posts--the President and the Prime Minster.
Dr Manmohan Singh, who was chosen by the Congress today to head a coalition government led by it will be the first Sikh and the first member of any minority community to become the Prime Minister.
All the previous Prime Ministers had been Hindus.
The man who will swear-in Singh, President APJ Abdul Kalam is a Muslim.
The President's post has been held in the past by two Muslims -- Zakir Hussain and Fakhruddin Ali Ahmed and a Sikh Giani Zail Singh.
Andhra Pradesh newly elected Chief Minister is a Christian.
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by Some1: *
Bharti/Swaraj should be locked in a room together with Modi for the rest of their lives...and yes a book of Kamasutra should be slipped under the door...
[/QUOTE]
Spot on.
But what is your problem with laloo,Mulayam and Mayawati. They also deserve your love.Lets lock these three in next room and provide them one year subscription of playboy. I dont wana give them Hindi magazines.I dont want them to waste time reading it.
there is a speculation following law may be a reason
The President is said to have informed her that according to Section 5 of the Citizenship Act of 1955, she has no right to assume the office of the Prime Minister of India and that he was seeking the advice of the Supreme Court on this issue. Section 5 of the Citizenship Act of 1955 says the rights and privileges allowed to foreigners who become citizens by application (not by birth) are conditional upon the rights and privileges granted to Indians in the country of the concerned person’s origin (in this case Italy).
[QUOTE]
*Originally posted by rvikz: *
imagine italian origin negotiating issue of kashmir with indian origin musharuff and both of them non-kashmiris.
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...now imagine Dr Manmohan Singh who has Pakistani origin negotiating issue of kashmir with indian origin musharuff and both of them non-kashmiris.
http://www.workingforchange.com/article.cfm?ItemID=16980
Geov Parrish
05.20.04 Printer-friendly version
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Walking away from power
On the decision by Sonia Gandhi to decline the post of prime minister in India – a move that would be unimaginable in the United States
I’m still trying to wrap my feeble mind around this one.
A few days ago, Sonia Gandhi – whose husband, Rajiv Gandhi, was assassinated while India’s prime minister in 1991, and who stands as the political inheritor of a family that has ruled India for much of its independence – led her party to a sweeping surprise victory in that country’s elections.
The electoral victory of Gandhi’s Congress Party was significant on its own merits. It came in large part because of India’s role as the world’s most populous democracy – a country that in a few years will be the world’s most populous, period. Millions of voters swept the ruling BJP party out of office, rejecting both its strident Hindu nationalism and its embrace of neo-liberal, free trade policies. In an allegedly booming economy, too many poor rural voters had seen none of the benefits of global capitalism, adding India to the growing list of global South democracies that have repudiated the so-called “Washington consensus.” As one of Asia’s largest economies, India added a powerful voice to the claim that neoliberalism is not the answer to the problems of the world’s poor.
That’s all important in it’s own right. But Gandhi overshadowed it all with her announcement on Tuesday that despite the votes of a majority of her countrymen, she would not become prime minister.
“I was always certain,” Gandhi announced, “that if I found myself in the position that I am in today, that I would follow my inner voice. Today that voice tells me that I must humbly decline this post.”
I am trying to imagine any American politician saying or doing such a thing.
I can’t.
Certainly, there have been figures who might have done well in an election had they chosen to run – Mario Cuomo’s Hamlet act throughout the '80s, for one. LBJ as an incumbent president in 1968, for another. But they could have lost, too.
What Gandhi did was qualitatively different: walking away from a post of enormous power as it was first being handed to her – out of the conviction that she did not want what that power would mean to her personally.
Much of the reason a move of this type is unimaginable here is structural. Gandhi leads a party – an important post in itself in a parliamentary system, different from leading a nation. Without that strong party obligation, American politics – appropriately enough – centers much more on the individual.
As a result, we get presidents and presidential candidates who of necessity have massive egos. No other personality type can go out and try to raise hundreds of millions of dollars to convince an electorate to hire him (or, someday, her) as president. Regardless of party, the only type of person who can survive our political process long enough to make it to the very pinnacle has to crave that power at the very essence of his being.
Kerry, Gore, Dole, Clinton, Bush Sr., Dukakis, Mondale – they all wanted power so badly we could taste it. One of the things that made both George Bush and Ronald Reagan so electable was that we didn’t sense that raw ambition – and then the imperious nature of their administrations belied that implicit promise of humility. In American politics, even the senators and governors and the people who surround the president generally have gotten to that point by craving power. They just aren’t electable enough to get any further than they’ve gotten.
Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, this means you.
Regardless of party, regardless of ideology, American politics could use a strong infusion of what Sonia Gandhi demonstrated this week: a sense that there are things more important than power. With that sense, we might not get leaders willing to mortgage our country’s future for their own, shorter-term political fortune. We might get leaders who see the presidency less as a chance to get stuff named after them, and more as a human link connecting the past and future in a chain of great tradition. We might even get leaders who can admit it when they’re wrong, or who don’t set themselves up as God’s representative on earth. Less Louis XIV, and more Gandhi. The other Gandhi.
Ironically, greatness in leadership requires humility. It takes a strong sense of self and of one’s place to be able to walk away from such power.
It’s a pity that America’s emphasis on personality politics makes finding such leaders nearly impossible. Perhaps we voters should try harder.
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*Originally posted by kaka_in_usa: *
BTW Anybody is better than Mulayam or laloo.
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Laloo is better than Jaylalitha. JJ was not the most corrupt politican in India, she was the most corrupt politician in the world.
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*Originally posted by kaka_in_usa: *
BTW Anybody is better than Mulayam or laloo.
[/QUOTE]
Humm...What about Mayawati,Narendra Modi, Uma Bharti,Mamta bannerji,Jaylalitha. !!!!! List goes on !!!!
BJP on the whole is better for India than the left leaning Congress. Let's see what these Chu****s can deliver. If the GDO goes below 7 % you will see a middle class revolt that will make Sonia go back to the fk place she came from.
The other day you were saying that MM Singh is your long lost buddy! 
MM singh is. But congress party isn't. I admire MM singh but I don't like the congress parties platforms. Faisal this is democracy..go slow..
MM Singh might be a great man...but until the Gandhi name is removed from the political framework of the country, it is to India's detriment. (my personal feelings)
there are many congress memebers who voted for BJP because of Vajpayee..catch my drift?