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Thursday, June 28, 2007

The President Question - Online debate goes even as media seems to maintain a studied silence!

I had written earlier regarding my concerns on the process in which the Presidential candidate was being chosen (Jun 13, 2007, Desicritic - Selecting the Indian President - Loyalty Above Pride) and later with a hope that perhaps whoever is the new incumbent, the good precedence set by Kalam be followed (Jun 23, 2007, Desicritic - Will India Have Another People's President?) .

At that time I was not much focussed on the person being proposed as much as the process of arriving at the proposal, but, the online discussions that have followed since then including a few press reports seem to indicate that there a few skeletons in the cupboard of the current favourite that needs to be looked into. I thought that these are issues that those who proposed (and in this case, decide) names will be careful about. Apparently not, the Business Standard news item talks about a few of the skeletons, bloggers have been far more forthright not having to adhere to any bureaucratic norms or dependent on government advertisements for their survival, so, we have some strong writings, 'Why Prathiba Patil should not be the President', 'You may make her the President...but you cannot make us respect her', 'Prathiba not for President',...resulting in an online campaign that has been launched called, 'India demands answers first'.

As I haven't seen much of this in the regular media and only among bloggers, wanted to flag this.


1 comment:

hh said...

I am not supporting Pratibha Patil but she should be considered innocent until proved guilty. I do believe that with all the controversies surrounding her, either she should come up with point-by-point refusal or she should not run or be supported for the highest post on moral grounds.

It should be remembered that the other alternatives also do not have distinguished records. Bhaironsingh Shekhawat is no saint and although Dr. Abdul Kalam is an extremely likeable person, he has his own shortcomings - remember his silence when there was no stopping in sight to post-Godhra carnage. For someone like him, whose voice would have been noticed by everyone in the world, there is no excuse for such murderous silence.

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