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Presidential race : No second term for Kalam |
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B.I. Saini
The five-day drama over a second term for President A.P.J. Abdul Kalam ended on Friday, June 22, with the incumbent withdrawing from the contest and virtually accepting that his three-day old decision taken on June 20 to wait for a few days for “certainty” to evolve on his candidature was a non-starter. The reaction of the ruling United Progressive Alliance (UPA) and the supporting Left parties to his surprise Wednesday announcement that he was agreeable to run for a second term in office, if there was “certainty” about his re-election, was a clear signal that he could win only by massive cross-voting. This would have meant the President, supposed to be non-partisan, engaging actively in propagating and working for his re-election.
Thankfully, President Kalam has now taken his hat out of the ring of the Presidential poll, but not before in a way damaging his own image of a “People’s President”, and also the institution of the Presidency to some extent. President Kalam’s announcement that he was willing to wait for a few days for “certainty” to emerge on his candidature, drew strong reactions from the UPA. While Prime Minister Manmohan Singh side-stepped the issue, some of his Ministers were not so considerate and, in a way, went against constitutional propriety by attacking Dr. Kalam. Three Union Ministers representing different constituents publicly asked Kalam not to enter the Presidential race. Railways Minister Lalu Prasad Yadav said that President Kalam should “retire gracefully” as it was too late for a rethink by the UPA on putting up Pratibha Patil as its candidate for President. Parliamentary Affairs Minister Priyaranjan Dasmunshi said that it was upto the President to decide whether he wanted to entertain the third front after being formally informed by the Prime Minister of Pratibha Patil’s candidature. Nationalist Congress Party chief and Agriculture Minister Sharad Pawar said that the match was over for Kalam. He said, “in a democracy, anyone can contest elections, but one cannot say that he will contest only if he wins.”
The Left parties opposed Dr. Kalam’s reported move on the basis of the convention that no President, barring Dr. Rajendra Prasad, had been re-elected for a second term. CPI general secretary A.B. Bardhan said that Dr. Kalam should not depend upon a “mirage of consensus.”
President Kalam has now said that “enough is enough”, and that is why he decided not to run for a second term. During an interaction with journalists of a news agency on Saturday, June 23, Kalam said he did not want to damage the name of the Rashtrapati Bhavan.
There are reports that President Kalam was hurt at the UPA reaction to his remarks about “certainty” emerging on his candidature, but in a way, he is himself to blame for landing in this situation. With the UPA and the Left already announcing their candidate for the Presidency, it was apparent that Kalam could not have been re-elected without engineering massive cross-voting. In hindsight, he should have summarily rejected the Third Front’s request to him to seek re-election as President for a second term.
The contest for the Presidency looks set to touch new lows with questions being raised about the UPA candidate Pratibha Patil’s association with a cooperative sugar mill which has defaulted in repayment of loans and her allegedly protecting her brother, reportedly involved in a murder case. The critics forget that she ceased to be chairperson of the sugar mill more than a decade back and that the courts had rejected the move to make her brother an accused in the murder case.
Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat will be filing his papers today, June 25, as an Independent candidate, but with the assured support of the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance. In the electoral college which elects the President, he is over two lakh votes behind the UPA candidate, Pratibha Patil, who filed her papers on June 23. If he hopes to make a fight of it, he will have to get the support of the Third Front, now christened as United National Progressive Alliance (UNPA), which has over one lakh votes in the electorate college.
For the record, the Third Front has said that it will support neither Pratibha Patil nor Bhairon Singh Shekhawat. But going by the close collaboration between the Front and the BJP-led NDA in boosting Dr. Kalam’s candidature, which was apparent during the fast-paced developments last week, the possibility of some of its constituents backing Shekhawat cannot be ruled out. An interesting contest is building up, even though at the present moment, Pratibha Patil appears to be assured of making it to Rashtrapati Bhavan as the country’s first woman President.
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