Monday, December 10, 2007

Flip-Flop-Flip, Congress-"Oopsie!"

Congress' sorry performance has continued unabated since the day Gujarat elections were declared. Supremo Sonia was undoubtedly gunning for Narendra Modi when she read 'maut ke saudagar' aka 'merchants of death' in her thick Hindi accent from her prepared speech.

When asked about the remark, Kapil Sibal, being the shrewd lawyer that he is, flatly denied that it was such. But, his fellow Congman, Abhishek Singhvi, high on "hyper-bole so nihal" spirit, not only admitted that Sonia said so but further dug himself in saying it could be easily verified from the statement. Clearly his bluster was aimed at Muslim vote-bank. But now with the election commission reading the riot act, euphemistically called 'model code of conduct,' Congress did a full 360 volte-face, flipped once again, and denied what it had assented to just 24 hours ago. While Congress won't be affected much by such verbal gymnastics, one has to pity its media minders (Chindu being the foremost) , who are left red-faced with the Supremo's lacluster performance.

After all, it is the media and NGOs that have been running its campaign in Gujarat, as Ashok Malik rightly observes here.

I wonder what Singhvi's excuse is going to be. Maybe this- "I was for the remark before I was against it." :-)

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