Our country has been invariably let down by messiahs who descended over the horizon raising great hopes among the masses. In the mid-80s, the country embraced V P Singh with great fanfare only to feel cheated a few months later. The lacklustre politician who rode to power exploiting the Bofors corruption scam did not take long to squander all his political capital. Soon he became a comical figure, trying to revive his political career by taking up stray causes. A few decades later, Arvind Kejriwal emerged from the anti-corruption campaign fronted by the simple-minded Anna Hazare who has since been pushed to the sidelines. The street-smart former IRS officer promised the moon, and people in quest of deliverance from the corrupt and opportunistic parties rallied with gusto under his standard. Yet, it did not take long for him to let down the people.
Winning an unprecedented 67 out of 70 seats in the Delhi Assembly, Kejriwal began his innings by grandstanding, and fighting the designated head of the State Government, the Lt Governor Najeeb Jung. Not a day passed when he did not abuse the Prime Minister, blaming him for his own failure to deliver on any of his promises. Meanwhile, one after another his ministers and legislators got embroiled in cases of gross misconduct, sleaze and scams. The latest, Sandeep Kumar, the Minister for Women and Child Development, of all the people, was captured on video in flagrante with a woman who was not his legally wedded wife. The sleazy CD made the rounds of newsrooms for days before Kejriwal sought to make a virtue of necessity, claiming that he did not tolerate wrong-doing. The sacked minister, it turned out, had resigned on his own when he heard of the tell-tale CD. And such is the moral high ground AAP claims to have the sole monopoly of that an AAP loudmouth, Ashutosh, ticked off the media for prying into Kumar's private life, arguing that the sex on tape was consensual. That it was at least adulterous since the minister was still married was of no concern to the pretender-leader.
Half of his ministers thus ousted in 18 months for various kinds of wrong-doing, and another transferred out from a ‘wet' to a ‘dry' department, Kejriwal has virtually let down the lakhs of people who had voted for AAP in the hope that it would offer a welcome break from the criminal and corrupt politics of the past. It does not. In fact, AAP is not capable of being a responsible political party. It is a collection of highly ambitious men and women out to get what they can by abusing the existing political players. They play the game most recklessly, defying the Constitution and the norms and rules without which no administration can function.
