It was so shameful to watch Congress MP's lined up one after the other to plead,cry and hound Sonia Gandhi to revoke her decision. Is their party so bereft of leaders and do they suffer extremely low self esteem that they cannot look beyond her? In some sense Congress party is a reflection of the rural voters of country. Totally smitten by the Gandhi-Nehru family and in awe of them. They would readily go all out, to vote them back to power. It reeks of 'mai-baap' tradition of an olden era of the country.
They did this to Rajiv too, but he buckled into their pressure, but this lady - Sonia, ain't going to buckle under pressure. She isn't very Indian to buckle under pressure. Sonia has alway been reluctant to get into politics and I was surprised initially when her name for PM post was doing rounds. Somewhere down the line, I anticipated this but couldn't really verbalize it or write it down.
There were various factors for her to get into the helm of the Congress affairs around 1996-98
1. Lot of pressure from key Congress Men to ensure the Congress party from disintegrating.
2. BJP's inroad into Indian Polity might wipe out the Congress party.
Some not-so-important factors but yet had relevance to her personal interests
3. Prepare the ground and hold the control of the Congress party, for her children, if they ever want to enter politics in future.
4. Maneka Gandhi's attempt to inherit the Gandhi Charisma and name.
5. Maybe keep a lid on the Bofors Scandal, too.
She never wanted to get into politics nor wanted any post and I suspect the results of this election took Sonia by surprise and suddenly she was left with the post of PM staring at her. Sonia never thought that it would come to this, she and the rest, just expected the elections to be a formality and expected BJP to come back to power. It was more of hold the fortress for some more time, give one more term to BJP and allow one of her children to get ready, to take up the mantle of power at a later date.
The unexpected election results has put everyone's calculations in a quandary. BJP really wanted one more term to establish themselves in the annals of the History of this country totally, whereas Congress and Sonia in particular wanted few more years before they can chart the waters of History of India again.
But the voters of this country seems to have different ideas or maybe had no ideas and were clueless. I suspect the second one.
Jai to the voters of this country, Jai Democracy and Jai Hind.
