For quite some time both the party and the government look more defensive than affirmative.
The recently held Congress Working Committee under presidentship of Sonia Gandhi has realized that something wrong is going within the party and the government. CWC felt that it is time for serious introspection to find why the coalition government under Dr Manmohan Singh has landed in such a mess. Procrastination is the thief of time and it took the Congress Working Committee under Presidentship of Sonia Gandhi to realise this.
According to bits and pieces emerging from the two-hour meeting, there was no-holds-barred critical analysis of what went wrong and what needs to be done to repair the damage. It is learnt that Dr Manmohan Singh came under fire from senior ministers and leaders. He was taken to task for leaving senior ministers to face the music and he chose to remain in the background in the government face off with the self-styled civil society on the issue of corruption.
The CWC took two crucial decisions- to send a strong message to Anna Hazare and his team that it will safeguard supremacy of Parliament at all costs and will not tolerate tactics of blackmail and Dr Manmohan Singh as the Prime Minister of the nation must be seen and heard more often and leave this to senior ministers.
The Prime Minister is accountable to the people. Having given its piece of its mind to Dr Manmohan Singh, the CWC stood united to rally behind the Prime Minister. Congress general secretary Digvijay Singh-the leader of the Opposition within Party has dubbed by Mr P Chidamabaram who fired the first salvo saying while “the country needs a young Prime Minister and although there was no vacancy for now and he goes on to say that Dr Manmohan Singh doing a fairly good job. He said this in a TV interview. Mr Chidambaram has said that he agreed with those who wanted PM Manmohan Singh to speak on Lok Pal “Yes, I acknowledge that lots of people would like the PM to step up to the plate, so as to say and speak more often”.
Dr Manmohan Singh, it seems, taken these crticism seriously. PM Wednesday press conference with editor of regional media is the beginning of process of re-furbishing his image. He has decided to meet senior editors of print and electronic media more often to lead the government to counter its criticism.
It has to be seen if the PM’s new public relation tactics will able build party and government image or not.