It’s hard to imagine a single politician other than Rahul Gandhi who has served at the highest echelons of one of the biggest political parties in the world and yet, doesn’t have a single significant victory to his credit. His entire political career is a series of misadventures one after the other with no victories in between. Despite that, the leaders of the party are kneeling at feet begging him to continue as President.
During his time in the Congress as a General Sectrary (2007-13), Vice President (2013-17 and eventually the President (2017-19), the party oversaw the biggest corruptions the country has ever seen while in power. During his tenure as Vice-President, the Congress was reduced to its lowest ever tally in Independent India and as President, he cemented his party’s utter decimation in electoral politics and he himself lost the traditional bastion of the Nehru Parivar to Smriti Irani in Amethi. His political career has been a catastrophe no matter what the standards of measurement are.
That he is unfit to hold public office in any capacity was amply demonstrated when he tore up an ordinance which was passed by Manmohan Singh’s cabinet, a Prime Minister from his own party. He showed complete disregard for the institutions of the country. It became evident, that his entitlement as a scion of the Nehru Parivar clouded his judgment and had made him extremely arrogant.
The scams that Rahul Gandhi’s party oversaw during the UPA represent one of the darkest moments in India history. Vast sections of the population had completely lost faith in the government and India teetered on the brink of anarchy. He, along with his mother, is an accused in a scam himself, the National Herald scam, and currently out on bail. All his close aides, from Chidambaram to Ahmed Patel to Motilal Vohra are either directly accused in scams or linked to one.
Rahul Gandhi’s commitment toward his party, let alone the country, is a matter of never-ending speculation. After every defeat in elections, he was off to some vacation in some foreign land. Death, taxes and Rahul Gandhi’s foreign trips, some things in life never disappoint. That he was never serious about politics was proven beyond all doubts when he was reduced to winking and hugging in the Parliament.
When anti-national slogans were raised in Jawaharlal Nehru University, slogans which declared a vow to wage war against India until its disintegration, Rahul Gandhi was the first politician to reach the institution and lend his support to the slogans. When people from his party questioned the Surgical Strikes and insulted the Army, he took no action against them. In spite of Navjot Singh Sidhu’s numerous transgressions, he suffered no consequences.
Even in his resignation letter, there was the penchant for avoiding responsibility written all over it. While he claims to take responsibility for his actions and step down, he alleged that the BJP had captured all the institutions of the state and that it wasn’t really a free and fair election. How is he taking responsibility for the defeat if he claims that the election was rigged against the Congress party in the first place?
The idea perhaps came from his mentor Sam Pitroda who has spent a lot of time in the USA. Pitroda must have gotten the idea of rigged elections from the Russian collusion delusion the liberal establishment has been peddling against Donald Trump. Rahul Gandhi isn’t famous for his intellect, therefore, there is a good chance that the idea came from elsewhere.
In doing so, he has insulted the people’s mandate and denied an opportunity for the party to conduct some honest introspection. The Congress party has been rejected throughout the country, in 17 states it couldn’t win a single seat. The party’s performance in the South which helped them win more seats than in 2014 was primarily due to regional alliances and the arrogance and suicide committed by the Left. And in Punjab, it was entirely due to Captain Amarinder Singh’s individual calibre.
And this is after ignoring the spate of bloopers he keeps making at regular intervals. No one could argue that his reputation as Pappu is not well earned. From waking up in the morning at night to Potato-Gold converters, he has regularly shown that his clarity of thought is utterly non-existent.
And yet, despite all of this, the senior leaders of the Congress party still want him to carry on as President. Exactly what are Rahul Gandhi’s achievements that if he doesn’t carry on, the party will be worse off? If the fear is that without a Gandhi at the helm, the party will disintegrate, then the Congress party, plain and simple, doesn’t deserve to exist. If a politician as incompetent as Rahul Gandhi is the only person keeping the party together, not even the Gods can save such a party.
The Congress party, for the foreseeable future, will be unable to occupy the corridors of power. And it is a testament to their decline that they are begging the person who oversaw the decline as the party president to carry on regardless of the fact that he doesn’t have a single victory to his credit.