Dear Rahul Gandhi,
You have been in the public life for almost fifteen years now, of which the first decade your party was in power. The ten years of UPA government were clouded with various scams, most of which were responded with radio silence from your end. Since the past four years, you have been in the opposition, where under your leadership, Congress has failed to gain the lost ground in 2014. Despite that, you are still hailed as a hero by your party leaders and your party is pitching you as the prime ministerial candidate in the upcoming 2019 general elections.
I have been following your speeches and social media account for the last four years but when I am asked to list your achievements as an opposition leader I struggle to mention even one. Your hugs and winking spree, your inability to stand with the government when it was attacking the enemies, your address to the NRIs in Germany when Kerala was facing worst floods in the history followed by your visit to Kerala when the government had finished most of the restoration work comes to my mind.
A part of me wants to take you seriously but when I think of your actions I am unable to do so. There is no consistency in the message that you share as the leader of the opposition and as the President of Congress party, except, perhaps your soft Hindutva stand. During Gujarat election, saw you doing temple run in Gujarat and you visited Gujarat frequently for campaigning. So much so that your party leader had to come out and ‘clarify’ that not only are you ‘a Hindu, but a janeu dhaari Hindu‘. On the same lines, we never saw you visiting or participating in any of the events organized by the Muslim community. Why did you alienate your core vote bank?
You recently went to Kailash Mansarovar and soon after your visit posters in MP presenting you as Shiva Bhakt emerged. I was starting to think that maybe you are genuinely concerned about Hindus but then your party served a shocker. I recently saw Randeep Surjewala saying that if Congress party comes to the power it will give reservation to the upper caste. Reminded me of the time you had promised Paditars will get reservations if Congress comes to power in Gujarat. What is worst is none of your party representatives including you ever explain to the public how will your party give reservation to Patidars and upper caste communities. You accuse the BJP of playing communal card and dividing society, while you and your party indulge in the same.
You bash Modi in India and on international platforms, I understand your agenda but then I never see you answering how you will change things when you come to power? You have been going on and on that Modi government failed in handling the Doklam crisis. However, when you were questioned how you would have handled it, you said how you were not aware of the details and hence could not answer. What, then, are you basing your allegations that the Modi government failed?
Rafale is another thing you have been consistently attacking the BJP government but even there I see no consistency in your attacks. How do you manage to quote different figures in your speech at different places? Why do you do that? Is it that hard to remember or does the number change and multiply automatically as the election is nearing?
If you are so confident on BJP government’s indulging in corruption what is stopping you from filing a case? Let the law take its due course? Why hasn’t congress party been able to go to the court with a proof? All these noise making should result in something, right?
You have talked about women empowerment at so many places then why did your own member of social media IT Cell had to struggle to get heard when she was abused by one of the co-workers? Why did the accuse have ‘full support of the Congress‘? Why did your IT head, Divya Spandana, indulge in blaming the victim?
And then your juvenile winking spree. From the floor of the parliament, to rally in Rajasthan, it is just bizarre to see someone who aspires to be the prime minister of world’s largest democracy indulge in such kiddish acts. It makes one feel that you are not serious about the issues you are talking about. And that ‘many facets of Rahul Gandhi‘ stunt your IT cell did in an attempt to make you appear cool, makes one wonder if you think running a country is like participating in a comedy show!
You are getting good traction on social media and I must applaud your social media team but there too your party goofs up way too often. National Herald, your mouthpiece accepted that Bofors was a scam. A self-goal indeed.
I wish you start taking yourself seriously and stop with the theatrics if you wish to be taken seriously as a worthy opposition. Because as of now the only thing that I can see is your and your party’s desperation to come to the power and that alone doesn’t suffice for an educated, thinking voter to vote for you.
