The metamorphosis to a ‘full-time
mainstream politician’ – the mainstream that was bashed left, right and centre
by Arvind Kejriwal when he had announced to take political plunge on August 3,
2012, before ending his fast – is complete now.
How fast Kejriwal has graduated to
it, how efficiently he has donned the different manipulating colours of Indian politics of the day, is self evident when we align his speech that he had delivered while
announcing his political foray in August 2012 to the text of the purported tape
that emerged yesterday where he is heard hurling abuses on Yogendra Yadav and
Prashant Bhushan, the two senior-most founding members of the Aam Aadmi Party
and the anti-corruption platform that Kejriwal so ‘politically’ used to become
a ‘full-time politician’.
Here are the key excerpts from his
August 3, 2012 speech: (NDTV)
“We have no great love for entering politics. Our aim is not to
grab power, but to end the Delhi-centric government and take governance to the
villages and the people. Ours will not be a party, but a movement. Ours will
have the structure of an andolan, and be what the people want.”
“There will be no party high command and the people will select
the candidates. We will go among the farmers and the people and ask them about
their problems. They will tell us about their problems and their solutions. We
will also go among the youth and ask them about their problems and ask for
solutions. Likewise, we will go around the entire country and meet people. They
will form the ghoshna patra (manifesto).”
"Our aim is not just to win the polls, it is to challenge all
the political parties. I have a vision that in three years, India will
change," he added. General elections will be held in India in 2014.”
Cut to March 2015.
Kejriwal is ‘loudly’ among them now,
sitting comfortably in the lot that happened to be the ‘main spark’ for his
political plunge.
The excerpts from the latest AAP
sting, on Kejriwal, makes it self-evident. Here are the disturbing echoes from
the tape: (The Times of India)
Umesh: But I feel that there are problems because you have been
kept away. Sir, please get involved.
Arvind: I didn't come for this kind of fighting. I have no
interest in it. You work with Prashant Bhushan and Yogendra Yadav. My best
wishes are with you. I have not come to fight. If the need arises, then I am
thinking of leaving Aam Aadmi Party and forming another party. You manage Aam
Aadmi Party. It is a very good team, Prof Anand Kumar...In the past four days,
Prof Anand Kumar and Ajit Jha have done kaminapanti, they are so kamina. They
said implement RTI, we said alright, we are ready. A dialogue was still on
between the two groups then. They said volunteer participation...we agreed to
all the demands. And now yesterday they said they were just bargaining. 'We
don't have any interest'...are you so kamina! What bargaining are you doing?
Are you such cheap people? What you call my less capable team is made of pure
men. We might be less capable but we have a clean heart. You have a malicious
heart and are kameene log. So best wishes to you Umesh.
Umesh: Sir, don't think like this.
Arvind: No, listen, listen, listen. I don't want to have any
further discussion on this which is why I have kept myself away from this. Now
let's see what they are doing, otherwise I will take my 66 MLAs and break away.
You run Aam Aadmi Party. I will have nothing to do with Aam Aadmi Party.
Umesh: Sir please understand, this is not about you or me, this is
about the country.
Arvind (shouting): What drama is this that we should all work
together? Go speak to them. Un saalon ne harane mein...what you are calling a
good team left no stone unturned to ensure that we lost the Delhi election. Now
we should take them along? If they were in any other party, they (un saalon ko)
would have been kicked out by now. Kameene log hein woh ek number ke. I don't
know what they are.
Umesh: Sir I am not able to see things from that close or
understand.
Arvind: Then don't speak if you can't see, alright.
From - ‘not a party but a movement’- from
- ‘no party high command’ – from - ‘aim is not to grab power’ – from – ‘only
about people’ –- to – ‘kaminapanti, they are so kamina’ (bastards) – to – ‘a
party synonymous with just one person’ – to – ‘not about people but about
Kejriwal’ – to – ‘a high command that is as opaque and dictatorial as any other
one person/one family political party – a big letdown – in just two years and eight months.
Kejriwal claimed in 2015 that he had
a vision that India will change in three years. Now, it is not even three years and his
polity says it is he who has changed his ways to align himself to the
political mainstream.
It is not that Arvind Kejriwal has
failed the ‘common man’, the ‘aam aadmi’, for the first time. He did it in
December 2013 when he formed an ‘opportunistic government’ in Delhi with
Congress’s support. Next he did so by deserting Delhi to try his political luck
in the parliamentary polls.
With a loss of face there, he again
came to the questionable ways of mainstream politics by trying poaching MLAs from
other parties to form the government (as yet another sting with his voice
purportedly revealed).
All this while he had a benefit of
doubt that these were the honest mistakes of an activist-turned politician who
was learning ways to make inroads in Indian politics. Coupled with the BJP’s
lackluster show on running Delhi during the Central rule in the National
Capital Territory of India, he made a blockbuster comeback in the February 2015
Delhi assembly polls.
Arvind Kejriwal and his party
projected it as the triumph of the ‘aam aadmi’.
But the developments since then clearly
tell us that Mr. Kejriwal has failed the common man once again.
It was not that all was well in the
AAP. There were reports of internal rift during the Lok Sabha polls and in the
period before and during the the campaigning phase of the Delhi assembly polls.
It is not that Yogendra Yadav and
Prashant Bhushan were beyond doubt but what Kejriwal did, what followed in
the AAP meeting today, clearly let the common man down.
By orchestrating all that happened
today, killing internal democracy and crushing voices anti- to him in his party,
Kejriwal has betrayed the common man finally.
Because, at any cost, what he is
heard speaking on the tape and the drama that he curated today, cannot be
accepted, when his political base begins with opposing the mainstream of Indian
politics, when he seeks political entry on a 'promise of politics of change'.
If the AAP was at all a politcal
movement as Kejriwal had claimed in August 2012, it is effectively dead now.
The politician Arvind Kejriwal, who
abuses his colleagues and crushes political dissent in his party with iron
grip, has lost the benefit of doubt that he enjoyed till the Delhi assembly
polls.
And it is bound to reflect on
upcoming electoral events.
©/IPR: Santosh Chaubey - http://severallyalone.blogspot.com/
