NEW DELHI – Congress hailed the relationship between Sonia Gandhi and Manmohan Singh as unprecedented and ideal, rebuffing criticism that the power-sharing arrangement was a failure and salving the embarrassment that it had caused to the party chief and the prime minister.
AICC general secretary Janardan Dwivedi said, “The relationship that exists between Congress president and the PM has never been seen before nor is it visible today. It should also be the model for future.”
He said that unlike other parties where the party and government heads share uneasy relations, Sonia and Singh had maintained good equations for over nine years.
The emphatic comment sought to rebut the criticism of dual leadership triggered by the remarks of party general secretary Digvijaya Singh who had last week said the division of power between the Congress chief and the PM had not worked. He also said that for a prime minister to be effective, he should have the powers to take decisions.
Although expressed in his personal capacity and despite his insistence that Sonia never interfered with the PM’s functioning, Digvijaya’s views were a repudiation of the party’s official narrative that Singh had complete freedom in government matters. That he chose to express his “personal” opinion when the PM was in South Africa to attend the BRICS summit caused unease in Congress; more so because BJP has been lampooning the PM as subservient to 10, Janpath.
Also, Digvijay’s remarks came just a day after he said that Rahul Gandhi had authorized him to deny reports that the Congress vice-president had ruled himself out of the prime ministerial arena: something that only added to the need to repair the perception of any disappointment with the PM’s performance.
Congress’s official pronouncement on Tuesday also seem to be aimed at closing the room for any speculation about divisions within the party on the leadership for 2014. Three recent statements had fed into the perception of confusion over the issue. First came Rahul’s purported statement that he was not interested in becoming PM. This was followed by Digvijaya’s statement that the Congress vice-president had been misunderstood. Lastly, the PM triggered speculation when he gave the impression that he had not decided to hang up his boots yet.
Asked whether he would agree to be Congress’s candidate for PM yet again if asked by Sonia, Singh told journalists on his way back from Durban on Thursday, “These are all hypothetical issues. We will cross the bridge when we come to it.”
Congress leaders, however, deny that the statements are in conflict with each other or are indicative of lack of clarity in the party on the issue of prime ministership for 2014.
