When polls come, vote!
Atal Behari Vajpayee
BJP Today
May 1-15, 1999
Title: When polls come, vote!
Author: Atal Behari Vajpayee
Publication: BJP Today
Date: May 1-15, 1999
Well, my countrymen, you sent your representatives to the Lok Sabha
for five years. They are coming back to you in just 14 months.
You know the reason for this as well as I do -for the entire drama has
been enacted on the open stage.
There was no issue, whatsoever, for bringing down the Government.
During the debate in the Lok Sabha, as well as outside, my colleagues
and I asked repeatedly: what is the issue on which the Government is
guilty of such misconduct that it should be brought down, that the
country should be pushed into an abyss? I listened diligently to the
debate-as you would have-for hours and hours. Not one new fact was
brought out, not one issue of any gravity was raised to warrant what
was being done.
It was not an issue that propelled those who acted. It was
calculation. A calculation that boomeranged.
The Government was working well.
* It was taking steps from which earlier Governments had shied away
for years-steps to make India strong.
* Even as the worst ever crisis struck economies in our neighbourhood,
the Government took steps to insulate, to save our economy.
* Having saved it from that typhoon, it took steps to make India
prosperous.
* The country was at peace.
* Terrorism was thwarted.
I sometimes wonder: as there was no issue, was the fact that we were
doing everything possible to make India strong and prosperous the
reason the Government was brought down?
When the debate began I asked, "What is the alternative you have in
mind? Who is going to lead the new Government? Of whom shall that
Government consist?" My questions were scoffed away. We will provide
the alternative in five minutes, it was said. In one minute, it was
said. Seven days went by, and you saw what happened.
We will tell the President what the alternative is, it was said, we
will not tell you. The President held meetings after meetings after
meetings. And they could not specify an alternative.
In any case, was this the right way to go about a matter of such grave
import? As you know, the Government has to handle matters of utmost
importance for the life and security of the country. It has to handle
matters of the utmost secrecy. There are matters so secret that they
are known only to the Prime Minister of our country. It is his duty,
when he hands charge to his successor, to inform the latter of these
matters. Can it be that in a parliamentary democracy, the House
should be asked to vote out a Government and a Prime Minister without
knowing in whose hands it will be placing matters of such extreme
secrecy and importance? Matters that spell life or death for India?
But that is what was done.
Friends, a democracy rests on one belief. And that is : when the
leaders of a country cannot solve their problems, the people will.
That is why the President, after having assessed all possibilities"
decided, and the Cabinet concurred, that there was no solution to the
current impasse except to come back to you.
Such episodes are ruinous for the country. The new election, as our
Chief Election Commissioner has told us, will impose a burden of 1000
crores of Rupees on our people. In one week of instability small
investors lost Rupees fifty thousand crores. And now, till elections
are held, no policy decisions can be taken-even though issues of great
urgency are coming up every other week: our negotiations with other
countries, our negotiations with international organisations, what we
should be doing in regard to international treaties, decisions
relating to the security of the country, decisions that directly
affect your welfare.
The world is leaping ahead of us: it is not going to pause, and wait
for us to settle our internal problems. Our own problems-the enormous
growth of population, uncontrolled urbanisation, your getting jobs-are
not going to slow down just because we do not have a Government in
place.
This is what you must ponder: is this the way the country should be
trifled with?
There is only one way to prevent such episodes from recurring in the
future: that is, to REMEMBER. Ever so often in the press of
day-to-day difficulties, ever so often because peripheral issues are
deliberately stoked up to divert us, we forget. The old pattern
recurs, the entire ruinous sequence is repeated again. And before we
know it, another generation is lost.
So my first request to you is: REMEMBER.
Second, our jurists and public men should reflect on the changes which
ought to be made In our system to insulate our country from such
buffeting. I will give you an example. You have just seen that a
Government was removed without the sponsors of that move having worked
out any alternative. Under the German Constitution, to remove a
Chancellor the House has to vote confidence in another person. In the
very act of removing one Chancellor, therefore, his successor is
installed. This would be a small change in our system. But even such
a small change would have prevented what the country is being put
through. There are many such small things that can be done and should
be done, and I would appeal to our public men: examine such changes,
and place them before the people.
Third-while it is true that in the end the Government was done out by
the maneuvers you have seen, the basic problem lies further back.
Because of the divisive turn which politics has been given over the
last 20 years, our electorate has been fractured. This resulted in a
fractured Lok Sabha. And that in turn resulted in a situation in
which, whichever Government would have been put in place, it would
have been vulnerable to the pushing and pulling of twos and threes.
This is the central problem that confronts us today. And the solution
to that lies in your hands alone.
That is my appeal to you:
* Rise above caste.
* Rise above sectarianism.
* Rise above parochialism.
* Rise above the advantage to your immediate group.
* When elections come, VOTE.
And vote with only one consideration in mind: THE INTEREST OF OUR
BELOVED COUNTRY.
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