By IANS
New Delhi : After keeping silent throughout the month-long presidential poll campaign marked by mudslinging, the Communist Party of India-Marxist (CPI-M) has come out in defence of Pratibha Patil, who is set to become the country's first woman president.
In an article in party mouthpiece 'People's Democracy', CPI-M general secretary Prakash Karat, who had suggested that Patil was not the Left nominee and the communists were just supporting her, lashed out at the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for its sustained attack on Patil.
"The BJP sought to oppose the candidature of Pratibha Patil, not on political grounds but took refuge behind allegations of misconduct, nepotism and corruption," Karat wrote in the latest issue of the weekly.
"Similar charges could be levelled against its own candidate (Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat), who was the chief minister of an opportunist coalition forged in 1993 and whose strong point has been the distribution of political patronage and other practices which fall far short of the ethical and moral standards which the BJP hypocritically espouses today."
The bitterly fought presidential election saw both the ruling coalition and the opposition levelling charges of fraud and corruption against each other. Shekhawat contested as an independent, but was backed by the BJP-led National Democratic Alliance (NDA).
Karat also took strong exception to the opposition's criticism that Patil, who is alleged to have become the UPA choice due to her loyalty to Congress chief Sonia Gandhi, would be a "rubber stamp president".
"The talk of a 'rubber stamp' president must also be seen in this context. It is amusing to see talk of Pratibha Patil as a 'rubber stamp' president ignoring the fact that the opposition candidate would have been a rubber stamp of the RSS (Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh) if he was ensconced in Rashtrapati Bhawan," he wrote.
Interestingly, the Left leader had refused to defend Patil during the more than month-long campaign. The BJP, which has even launched a website against Patil, had accused her of financial improprieties and shielding her brother who is facing murder charges.
Patil's name was sprung after the Left rejected Gandhi's first preferences.
Karat said his party came out against Shekhawat because of "the politics and ideology that Shekhawat has been upholding as a life long adherent of the RSS and the BJP. No one can overlook the role he played as chief minister of Rajasthan when his government helped the mobilisation of so-called kar sevaks to demolish the Babri Masjid (in 1992).
"It is hypocritical and politically dishonest on the part of the BJP and the NDA to have presented such a candidate as an 'independent'," he said.
Karat justified his party's stance that the new president, who will succeed A.P.J. Abdul Kalam, should be a political person, saying that the presidential decisions would generally be "political in nature".
He said that the Left's insistence on a political person was because it wanted that the new president should "withstand in future the pressures and counter the moves to undermine the secular principles of the state as laid out in the constitution".
However, Karat reiterated that Patil was selected by the Congress and the UPA, and the Left was "consulted" during the process.
In a veiled attack on Kalam, the communist leader said: "When President Abdul Kalam extolled the two-party system recently, he was essentially expressing a political opinion shared by the dominant classes in our society, including much of the big bourgeois media. What is objectionable is not that he expressed such views but the façade put up by some that he is a non-political person."