Lokpal Bill: Why The Congress Blinked..

For five days the drama of Anna Hazare’s fast unto death gripped the nation and even NRIs beyond our borders. In my previous post I had written that if the Manu Singhvis and the Manish Tiwaris and the Congress don’t wake up and act the people’s army and artillery will be right there at their doorstep. And sure enough, they were there. And how! A few Congressmen and some in the media tried to dismiss the Hazare campaign as arm-twisting and blackmail but little did they realise how well organised and planned the campaign was. The Congress didn’t get a sniff into Anna’s strategy.

First, let’s give credit where it’s due. Hahahhahaha! I am laughing at the silly media channels trying to take the credit for what was essentially a people’s campaign. Sample these slogans and lines : From Headlines Today: ‘People Against Corruption-Headlines Today Campaign’. Yes indeed, after all HT was the champion. Not to be left behind CNN-IBN slogan was ‘Citizens Against Corruption – A CNN-IBN Campaign’. Now you know who really ran the whole campaign against corruption! Don’t you? That’s not all there was your own channel TimesNow reminding us how it was the only channel to cover Hazare’s fast and campaign live right through. Hmmm! If not for TimesNow we would have never heard of all this. So now that the back-scratching by the news media has been dealt with, we can move on.

Kapil Sibal has once again proved to the nation what an ass he is. From the zero loss in 2G Scam to this campaign his utterances have over and over again proved only one thing – That Sibal doesn’t think much before speaking. Well, the otherwise articulate Sibal seems to have picked up these habits from the unbearable Singhvis and Tiwaris of the Congress. Forget Hazare holding a gun to the government’s head, the Congress shot itself in the foot once again. They didn’t really believe that Anna Hazare had it all well thought out and planned carefully.

First, corruption is a sore wound that hurts all citizens. Anna got it right. Then, it was important to get some honest and credible people into his campaign. So there was Anil Kejriwal and Kiran Bedi (I am not sure I want to put Swami Agnivesh in that league). Anna got it right. Catch the Congress at a time when elections are around in Tamil Nadu, Kerala and some more states. The timing was important. Anna got it right. The world cup fever had died and people had the mood for another public display of solidarity for something. Anna got it right. Then he had rightly expected that the people’s army would be out in great numbers all across the country. Anna got it right. Even a nobody like me got that one right. Most people did, all except the Congress. In the end, the Congress had only one option - 'Blink'!

Anna Hazare may not have expected his fast to wind up so quickly within about 4 days. He even had his next move planned – ‘jail bharo’. Caught up between a population growing increasingly angry and scared it might hurt their election alliances and results in key states did the Congress really have an option? The only option was to cave in and that’s the power of people. I am sure somewhere deep in their minds the Congress had images of Egypt and Libya playing out over and over again in their nightmares.

The campaign was a great victory and done in the right spirit. There was no rail-roko, no road-roko, no calls for bandh. This is how people can and should protest and agitate. Time the politicians and crooks learned who the real boss is! And no matter how the Congress paints the closure it’s been a resounding kick on the Congress ass and deservedly so. And it was fun while it lasted.