Opinion - Editorials   

Looking ahead

Everyone knew it was a one horse race. There is nothing wrong in guaranteed losers going all out to make a foregone conclusion look like a real contest. There is also nothing particularly wrong in exploiting weaknesses in the opposing camp, seeing that due diligence does not seem to have been done before nominating a person who was guaranteed, by the arithmetic of the electoral college, to be India’s 12th President. (The 2007 presidential election was actually the 13 th in the series that began in 1952, but Dr. Rajendra Prasad was elected twice, making him the only President who was allowed two terms.) But what was terribly wrong was for the Bharatiya Janata Party and the National Democratic Alliance to resort to a smear campaign of unprecedented viciousness, combining a modicum of fact with a maximum of falsehoods and dirty tricks; and for sections of the news media to participate in this intensely partisan propaganda.

Now that Pratibha Patil has been elected President of India with a higher margin of victory than was predicted from the party alignments — she won 2931 votes to her rival Bhairon Singh Shekhawat’s 1449 in the electoral college, which meant that the winning difference was a massive 306,810 in vote value — the extreme bitterness that characterised the campaign should be left behind. The issue is no longer whether Ms. Patil is the right person for the Rashtrapati Bhavan. It is how she should conduct herself institutionally as the next President of the Republic.

Since these days all kinds of things are expected and indeed demanded from the President, it is necessary to be absolutely clear about his — and now, for the first time in India, her — role and functions in the constitutional scheme. The office is high on ceremony and symbolism but strictly circumscribed in powers and functions — placing her or him on a par with the British sovereign, more or less. In the Indian context, the head of state may be politically elected but the restraints imposed by the constitutional office are the same. Walter Bagehot’s classic exposition of the role in The English Constitution, which is as relevant today as it was in 1867, is that “the Sovereign has, under a constituti onal monarchy such as ours, three rights — the right to be consulted, the right to encourage, the right to warn. And a king of great sense and sagacity would want no others. He would find that his having no others would enable him to use these with singular effect.”

What is more, the strictly circumscribed constitutional role requires that the right to advise and the right to warn must be exercised strictly in private and in confidence — and not through public statements. This restraint required by the head of state is not a mere constitutional formality but is based on sound democratic principles. In the first place, in a parliamentary democracy, a non-executive head of state must not, through statements critical of the representative government, which has a greater democratic legitimacy, place herself or himself in conflict with it. Secondly, the head of state must at all times appear non-partisan and remain above the fray when controversial and divisive questions are being debated in the political sphere; and must avoid any public statement that could give comfort to one side or the other.

But we need not rely only on Bagehot. “Under a parliamentary system of government,” India’s outstanding constitutional thinker, Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, explained to the Constituent Assembly on December 30, 1948, “there are only two prerogatives which the King or the Head of the State may exercise. One is the appointment of the Prime Minister and the other is the dissolution of Parliament. With regard to the Prime Minister, it is not possible to avoid vesting the discretion in the President.” He also clarified, in response to a question, that “the position of the Governor is exactly the same as the position of the President.” Supreme Court rulings are clear on these points. This newspaper has consistently, over a long period, advocated such a conception of the office. It can be demonstrated that virtually every case of presidential faltering — fortunately, such cases are few and far between — has been a case of overreach, an aborted attempt to exercise powers not vested in the constitutional office and not sustainable in a parliamentary democracy. It follows that those who conducted a near-hysterical campaign to the effect that Pratibha Patil would be a ‘rubber-stamp’ President have been barking up the wrong tree. What India decidedly does not need is an activist head of state who dreams of breaking away from the constitutional restraints.

Thankfully, the election of the Vice-President promises to be free from nasty controversies of the kind that marred the presidential campaign. The ex-officio and substantive function of the office is presiding over the Rajya Sabha — in other words, keeping its proceedings in reasonable order. Mohammad Hamid Ansari, the candidate of the United Progressive Alliance and the Left parties, is a man of undisputed integrity, and impeccable professional and intellectual credentials. This time the initiative was taken by the Left, especially the Communist Party of India (Marxist), which took care to do due diligence. The choice of Mr. Ansari, a former diplomat who chairs the National Minorities Commission, has met with a positive response in the media and polity. Given the numbers in the electoral college, which comprises all the Members of Parliament, including nominated M.P.s, the vice-presidential election too will be a one horse race. The BJP and the NDA now have a real opportunity to demonstrate that, under the changed circumstances, they can behave better than they did during the presidential contest.

Printer friendly page  
Send this article to Friends by E-Mail

Stories in this Section

Looking ahead

Copyright © 2007, The Hindu. Republication or redissemination of the contents of this screen are expressly prohibited without the written consent of The Hindu