I will not be a candidate for Prime Ministership if the UPA comes back to power, said Prime Minister Manmohan Singh during his third media interaction, perhaps not the last one, in his ten-year tenure as PM. What did he want to convey about his political career and Congress’s future political journey? What does this line has to tell and what does the ‘if’ in the assertion mean?
People may take this line in many ways. For example, one can mean that Dr. Singh is not going to be Prime Minister for the third term. It is sure from the first part of this line, but it is not sure whether Congress-led UPA is coming to power once again.
Is the Prime Minister not sure about the Congress’s victory in the upcoming general elections? He said that the Prime Minister will be the chosen candidate of UPA if it comes to power once again.
Is he sure about his political responsibility after the coming general elections? In his interaction he said he has not thought what he would do when his tenure as Prime Minister ends. But it is sure he won’t be the Prime Minister. Is he planning to retire from politics? After all he is 81.
Though he was not certain about his future course of action yet he supported the voice to make Rahul Gandhi the Prime Ministerial candidate of Congress in the coming elections. He said Rahul Gandhi has outstanding credentials to be nominated as the Prime Ministerial candidate of the party. He even went on to say that he felt the UPA government would have been strengthened had Rahul been a part of it.
Rejecting all the criticism, he said he believed he was not a weak Prime Minister and history would judge his work as Prime Minister. While defending himself from the criticism, he surrendered before the circumstances of his tenure and said he did the best he could do.
Describing corruption as a monster, he sought the cooperation of other parties. He said dealing with corruption is not an easy task. All parties have to work together to deal with it; one party alone cannot accomplish this difficult task.
He also tried to defend the government from the charges of alleged corruption by saying the charges relate to UPA-I but people of the country were not convinced of them and gave their mandate to the Congress Party. He also claimed to be the person who insisted on transparency in the investigation of scams like coal block while discarding the corruption allegations against Chief Minister of Himachal Pradesh.
Admitting defeat in Delhi’s assembly elections, he said that the only one year old AAP is able to discuss the problem of corruption aam aadmi has been facing and by doing this it came to power. He said that time will watch whether or not they will succeed.
He admitted that the Congress-led UPA government was not able to stop rising prices. He admitted inflation as the major factor for defeat in elections in Delhi, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh. He honestly said that the price rise was a factor in people turning against Congress in these states.
Answering a question about his understanding with Congress and its chief Sonia Gandhi, he said in dealing with complex issues her support was enormous. The Congress-led coalition government where party president and Prime Minister are not the same has worked well. He claimed his two terms in the office as the Congress ability to run coalition government; and at the same time he admitted that compromises were made in some issues.
He said it is not wrong to make corrections on the direction of party leadership in national interest. He showed some confidence while saying that the new generation of leaders will also guide the nation in the future.
On the question of Narendra Modi’s candidature for prime ministerial candidate of BJP, he said he believed what Modi says is not going to be materialised. “It would be disastrous for the country if Modi becomes Prime Minister,” he asserted in no equivocal tone.