Nothing tests the competence and vision of politicians than the exercise of power (“ >A party in a hurry ”, Sept. 16). With its alibi for the unsatisfactory performance of the Delhi government — interference by the Lieutenant Governor and non-cooperation from the Central government — looking increasingly stale, the Aam Aadmi Party has frittered away a lot of public goodwill that catapulted it to power.
The AAP’s failure to settle down in power (it is still behaving like an opposition party) largely stems from a deadly mix of incompetence, inexperience, and arrogance. After its electoral victory in Delhi, it started behaving like a national party and cast its leader in the mould of a messiah who has arrived to deliver India from corruption. Previous governments worked within the constraints imposed by Delhi’s peculiar hybrid status that make it neither a full-fledged Union territory nor a State.
Unable to give up the street fighter’s mindset despite being in power, the party’s leaders showed no respect for constitutional limits to Delhi’s statehood, and niceties of political conduct as is evident from their abrasive confrontations with the Lieutenant Governor.
The party’s image has plummeted in Punjab as its record in Delhi is nothing inspiring. Its resort to populism in Punjab has only betrayed its moral bankruptcy.
Bereft of any alternative political vision except empty grandiloquent rhetoric, the AAP is looking like a sole proprietorship political party that has neither the organisational reach and base nor the leadership material needed to rule any State.
V. N. Mukundarajan,
Thiruvananthapuram
