NEW DELHI // Indian Prime Minister Manohan Singh endorsed Rahul Gandhi as his successor on Friday after announcing he would step aside following this summer’s general election.
“I will hand over the baton to a new prime minister,” said Mr Singh, 81, of his widely expected decision.
In disclosing his political plans after a decade in office, the outgoing premier threw his weight behind Mr Gandhi, the 43-year-old heir to India’s Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty, as the next head of the Congress party and the country’s next prime minister.
“Rahul Gandhi has outstanding credentials,” Mr Singh said in only the third formal news conference of his premiership. I do hope the party will take the right decision at the appropriate time.”
By tradition, party officials choose the party’s nominee to be premier only after elections take place.
Mr Singh also denounced Narendra Modi, the candidate of the main opposition Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) for the election due take place in May, saying it “would be disastrous” for India to have the chief minister of Gujarat state as its prime minister.
The BJP has often claimed that Mr Modi would be a strong leader, contrasting him with the perceived weaknesses of Mr Singh. But the prime minister challenged the BJP’s definition of strength. “If by ‘strong prime minister’, you mean you preside over the massacre of innocents on the streets of Ahmedabad, that is not the kind of strength I will like to have.”
He was referring to anti-Muslim riots in Gujarat in 2002, in which more than 1,000 people were killed. Mr Modi has been widely accused of inaction, if not complicity, in the bloodshed.
The decision by Mr Singh not to seek another term as premier came as no surprise.
He has presided over India for ten years at the head of coalition governments led by the Congress party, which has been battered recently by corruption scandals, internal feuding and an inability to deal with a stumbling economy and deep-rooted problems with poverty, infrastructure and education.
In his comments to reporters, Mr Singh emphasised his government’s achievements even as he acknowledged deficiencies in dealing with inflation and corruption.
“I have done as well as I could under the circumstances,” he said. “Historians will perhaps be kinder than the contemporary media and the opposition.”
This is not the first time that members of the Congress party have, in their individual capacities, expressed their support for Mr Gandhi as prime ministerial candidate.
Mr Singh himself said last September that Mr Gandhi “would be an ideal choice” for the post of prime minister. Manish Tewari, the information and broadcasting minister, said earlier this week: “Rahul Gandhi is the natural leader of the Congress.”
With Mr Singh’s announcement and endorsement, the spotlight now turns upon the Congress party to break with tradition and speedily name its candidate, said Sushant Singh, a fellow at the Takshashila Institution, a Chennai-based think tank.
“Realistically speaking, apart from Rahul Gandhi, there is nobody else whom the Congress could name before the election as a candidate,” Mr Sushant Singh said. The Congress has a history of not naming a candidate in both national and state polls. Instead, the party high command selects the prime minister or chief minister after the party is ensured of victory.
“They may well decide to take that option now too,” Mr Sushant Singh said. “They realise that they’re not in a strong position, and that there’s a strong possibility they’re not going to come back to power. They aren’t blind to that.”
“So why announce a candidate beforehand and cause heartburn within dissenters in your party if you’re not even really in the race?”
ssubramanian@thenational.ae
