Sandesh Prabhudesai
30 May 1999
In the first public rally after she withdrew her resignation and took
back the reins of the Congress, party president Sonia Gandhi launched a scathing attack on
those who have left the party, stating that neither miscellaneous coalitions of these
defectors nor the BJP could provide stability to the country.
Addressing the campaign rally for Goa’s state Assembly elections
on the statehood day of the tourist state, Mrs Gandhi began her speech by describing the
recent episode as a ‘traumatic times the Congress went through’.
"But we have emerged and resurged through tribulations and
liberated it from those elements for whom the Congress was more of a convenience rather
than conviction", she said, without referring directly to the three leaders - Sharad
Pawar, Purno Sangma and Tariq Anwar, who were expelled.
Claiming that the Congress is now one and united, the party chief said
the party would now work with a clear aim of restoring stability in the Indian polity. She
also extended full support to the government and the jawans fighting in Kargil to flush
out the infiltrators.
The strategy to hit out at the BJP and Pawar’s third front is
being spelt out very clearly now. While posing the Congress as the only party which could
provide stability, she recalled 52 years since independence during which Congress
completed all its terms in 45 years while the non-Congress regimes gave seven prime
ministers in the remaining seven years.
"How can anyone believe that forging of non-Congress coalitions
will give any more stability in future if we look back at the past", she asked the
gathering amidst applause.
Without mentioning the BJP directly, Mrs Gandhi also cautioned that
only Congress could take ahead the society since it excludes no section of the society nor
it practices politics of hate or sticking to the past.
Congress in Goa has given ten chief ministers to the tiny state in last
ten years with series of games of defections and mad rush for ministerial positions.
Referring to it as ‘many many problems caused in the past’, Mrs Gandhi preferred
to push its responsibility on the electorate stating that it happened because Congress was
not being given clear majority.
While appealing to the Goan electorate for a clear mandate in favour of
the Congress, she reiterated the whole election manifesto in her speech, which includes
dramatic announcements like cabinet of not more than six to seven unlike jumbo cabinets in
the past, legislators declaring their assets regularly and rooting out corruption.
Mrs Gandhi later also addressed another rally in Margao, the South Goa
district town, before leaving for Delhi. The whole fleet of central leaders like Madhavrao
Scindia, Rajesh Pilot, Margaret Alva and others as well as chiefs of frontal organisations
are down in Goa to make her rally a success. But the crowds did not cross the figures of
5000 each in both the places.
