8th December marks one of the most monumental events in the history of the world’s largest democracy. Aam Aadmi Party spearheaded by Arvind Kejriwal came out triumphant in 28 out of the 70 seats in the capital of the country, rising as a beacon of hope promising to vanquish the gloom that has settled on the politics of our nation. I don’t intend to take away any credit from their victory, but with full objectivity I can safely say that, along with BJP, they rode on the anti-incumbency in Delhi, and the nation too. In a couple of weeks, I was startled to see AAP gleefully joining hands with Congress to form the government, as most of AAP’s campaign centered around the lack of accountable governance on Congress’s part. However, as claimed by Mr. Kejriwal, for the greater good and for respecting the choice of the public, it did make sense that AAP had to compromise on certain ideals. Within 48 days Mr. Kejriwal, who once was willing to consciously work with politicians he loathed, quits on the grounds of not being able to compromise on his ideals. What happened to the greater good and the choice of the public? Gone in less than 2 months!?!
This was just the start of the hypocrisy of Mr. Kejriwal. As all of us know, AAP’s central point of contention is corruption. ”Everyone is corrupt and we aren’t”. Some statistics I want to quote here – all of the BRICS nations suffer from endemic corruption, even China is battling corruption with a rank of 80 in the CPI rankings (Brazil and South Africa have better ranking FYI). In developing nations, corruption is inevitable and it cannot certainly go away in just a couple of years. Yes, we hate it and we want it dead, but saying I want it out doesn’t mean you are the only one doing it. Arnab Goswami says the same thing, should we vote for him? Another bewildering fact is that, within a span of two months AAP has hurriedly recruited more than 400 candidates from all walks of life without any background checks and wants us to believe that all of those 400+ are not corrupt. Seriously, do you plan to hoodwink us this way Mr. Kejriwal? Isn’t that hypocrisy when all you want is transparency and you pick 400 people arbitrarily?
Thirdly, I can’t still fathom Mr. Kejriwal’s daily ritual of lambasting Modi, when his main issue purportedly is poor governance and corruption. His ideology stems from the incumbent government being inefficient, and ideally going by his own logic shouldn’t Mr. Kejriwal take more digs at the ludicrous statements made by the UPA about better economic growth and development and what not. Here you have someone claiming statistics on poverty alleviation and job creation et al., but why isn’t “the only man who wants true change” not rubbishing those claims. If you harp on Modi’s claims about development in Gujarat being incorrect, why did you not make a single remark on Manmohan’s speech in Sivasagar about developments in Assam? This was your original stance, why did it change? Is it because the Modi wave is growing?
What happened to your ideals? Why aren’t we hearing more about governance and corruption? Why just Modi? Why the hypocrisy?