New Delhi: In stepped-up attack on Anna Hazare and BJP-RSS, Congress on Monday dubbed the Gandhian as an
"unelected dictator" who is reading the script of forces
attempting to destabilise the country".
"The greatest danger to the democracy is from the
unelected dictator....If democracy faces its biggest peril, it
is from the tyranny of the unelected and tyranny of the
unelectible", party spokesman Manish Tewari told reporters
without naming Hazare or BJP or RSS.
When told that he was describing Hazare as an "unelected
dictator", Tewari said "these are not my words...I have made a
generic statement".
Apparently sending the message to Hazare and his
colleagues not to take the engagement with the government for
granted, he said there can be only one veto in Indian
democracy and that is in the hands of people and "not any one
individual."
Hitting out at the civil society representatives led by
Hazare, Tewari said now there has been "violence in language"
of those who have been claiming to be Gandhians and it appears
that they have been reading the script of forces out to
destabilize the country.
As Congress leaders have been accusing Hazare and Ramdev
of being `masks` of BJP-RSS for sometime, Tewari conceded
there has been a change of the party`s attitude towards them
once it was known that they were "instruments of forces
attempting to destabilise the country".
On the controversial statement of party General Secretary
Digvijay Singh favouring inclusion of the Prime Minister in
the proposed Lokpal bill, Tewari said Singh has already
clarified that he was his personal view.
Taking strong exception to Hazare`s threat to go on an
indefinite hunger strike from August 16, Tewari wondered
whether it was democratic to talk about such threats when one
is engaged in a dialogue with the government. He said the
attitude of "my way or highway" is not proper.
"I think a constructive discourse entails restraint on
either side. It cannot be a one-way street. You cannot call
the government a bunch of frauds and cheats. You are talking
to a soverign government representing 1.2 billion people", he
said.
Congress` attack came a day after Finance Minister Pranab
Mukherjee had assailed Hazare for his demand for videographing
the meeting of the Joint Committee to draft the Lokpal bill.
Mukherjee heads the Committee.
Maintaining that by such diatribes against the
government, Hazare and his colleagues were "insulting the
electorate", he said it showed the "contempt" in which they
hold the government.
On various demands of Hazare including the inclusion of
the Prime Minister and the Supreme Court in the purview of the
proposed Lokpal bill, Tewari suggested the idea that the
Lokpal would be a panacea for all problems was wrong.
"Today, 78 per cent of the gross domestic product does
not come from the government sector and we are for a
regulatory mechanism for the next two decades. It should have
an overarching design of the Lokpal, Judges accounability
bill, (as also to take care of ) paid news, private treaties
and cross holdings in the media, money brought to the
political process".
PTI
