Congress should end the melodrama and replace him with a Gen Next leader!
End to Congress Dynastee rule? Now that Rahul Gandhi has officially resigned,
Our congrats to Rahul! We repeated several times that Rahul should stay put in his decision to disappear from the post of the leadership of he Congress. He has at least proved that he is a man of firm decision, not a wasilating person, a reed dancing to the pulls and pushes of the winds of praise or blame.
Let us hope at least this time with the help of a Congress schion himself, the Congress dynasty rule is wiped out of India. Read Sagarika Ghose who gives additional insights.james kottoor, editor, CCV
Sagarika Ghose in Times of India, July 3, 2019
Read below Sgarika Ghose
It was earlier reported that Rahul Gandhi had placed his resignation before the CWC, but now Rahul has officially and publicly resigned from the post of Congress President. In doing so, he has shown that he is willing to take responsibility and be accountable for the Congress’s disastrous showing in the 2019 general elections.
Although Rahul’s resignation can hardly be compared to his mother Sonia Gandhi’s “renunciation” moment in 2004 when she renounced the post of Prime Minister even as weeping Congressmen begged her to re-consider, yet this stepping down by Rahul could well be a salient moment in his political career.
In the past he has been known to shun responsibilities, to refuse ministerial berths, and has been mocked for never taking the flak for Congress failures. Yet this time he has actually been true to the Westminster model of parliamentary democracy and quit his post having failed to deliver.
In fact Rahul Gandhi has actually shown the way for many Indian politicians who almost always, never resign even in the face of an electoral debacle. All over the world, politicians resign! Yet in India resignations from politicians are so rare that Lal Bahadur Shastri’s resignation as railway minister as far back as 1956 after a rail accident is still seen as a shining moment of political accountability.
Yet all over the world resignations from politicians is routine. British PM Teresa May has just resigned following her inability to get her own party to accept her Brexit plan. In 2016 David Cameron resigned as prime minister after the Brexit referendum. Richard Nixon famously stepped down from presidency of the United States after the Watergate revelations of 1974. In democratic politics, politicians resign all the time if they are exposed in corruption scandals or if they fail politically. Why on earth then is the Congress party acting like a drama queen and pretending that the resignation of Rahul is a catastrophe worse than climate change?
That’s because this avatar of the Congress is umbilically tied to the Gandhi family and once the umbilical chord is cut, the party has begun to develop a death wish about its own survival. Splitting the Congress party twice, once in 1969 and again in 1978, Indira Gandhi ensured that the Congress – I, born with Indira as supreme leader, was nothing more than what Arun Jaitley once disparagingly called a “crowd around a family.” But now Rahul Gandhi, who is himself known for continually missing an opportunity, has actually provided the Congress with an opportunity. Instead of seizing this opportunity, cynical self-serving Congressmen are bent on hara-kiri.
The Congress must now immediately stop its melodramatic play-acting and its disingenuous pleading with Rahul to return and get on with electing a new Gen Next leader, and effect a total generational shift. The 18-25 age group in India is a lively and searching demographic, and in a country where 65 % are under the age of 35, Congress must appoint a young and dynamic leader or set of leaders to replace Rahul.
This is not the time for a return to the old guard, instead a time for a bold risk with a new young leader who can create a buzz with the youth. Congress missed a beat in 2018 when after wins in Rajasthan and Madhya Pradesh, it plumped for old guard chief ministers in both states. Now its time to rectify that serious error and appoint a younger generation to helm an old party.
Rahul Gandhi’s political career has been terribly short on inspiring moments. But by this public and official resignation, he has provided his party with an all-too-rare opportunity and with himself with a route towards a dramatic reinvention.
(DISCLAIMER : Views expressed above are the author's own.Sagarika Ghose has been a journalist for almost three decades, starting her career with The Times of India, subsequently moving to Outlook magazine and The Indian Express. She has been a primetime news anchor and at present is Consulting Editor, The Times Of India. She is also a political commentator on the news channel ET Now. Ghose is the author of the recently published best selling biography of Indira Gandhi, "Indira, India's Most Powerful Prime Minister." She is also the author of two novels, both published worldwide.)
