Team Anna breaks fast, to contest 2014 elections
Team Anna on Friday ended their 10-day fast at a function presided over by former Army chief General V K Singh, and sounded the war cry to fight the 2014 general elections.
V K Singh called Anna Hazare and his fight against corruption as the only hope for India, and appealed to the people to support Team Anna in its effort to change the politics in the country. He said corruption was the country’s biggest problem. “We are facing problems of inflation and economic slowdown. It appears that there is no governance in the country. The only alternative we have is the one offered by Anna Hazare. Every time you fight the powers that be, they will try to dent the image of the movement,” he said.
Singh said the movement was a return to the Jai Prakash Narayan era, when JP gave the call “Singhasan chhodo, janta aati hai...” He said JP identified corruption as the root issue of all problems. It continues to be so.
Singh welcomed and thanked Anna Hazare and his team for accepting his request, made yesterday, to provide a political alternative to the change the present political statusquo.
Team Anna member Arvind Kejriwal said, “ We would change the present system of paise se satta, satte se paisa... We would fight elections with people, not money,” he told the large crowd on the last day of the 10-day fast he had kept alongwith Anna Hazare, Gopal Rai and Manish Sisodia.
Kejriwal also challenged the Congress-led UPA government to bring a strong Lok Pal Bill, introduce the right to reject candidates and the right to recall elected representatives, besides decentralisation of power to every village in the coming one-and-a-half years. IF the Government can achieve these goals, we will withdraw our steps from politics, he said.
Kejriwal said that their political movement evolved from the point where it was realised that bringing crowds on the streets was not making the government listen to them. So we decided to enter parliament. He said that now the next goal was to decentralise power and remove it from its seat in Delhi. The British ruled India sitting in London and now a few people rule the country and decide for villages far away sitting in Delhi, he said.
He said that the next goal was to liberate each village from the clutches of centralised power and centralised decisions.
He said that the team would go to people and ask them to select candidates. THe people would also decide the manifesto for their movement, he said.
Then other parties would be challenged to emulate this. Our victory would be in forcing other parties also to quit their mode of politics and go to the people, Kejriwal said outlining the framework his new political outfit would have.
Academic Yogendra Yadav a supporter of the Anna movement said that the movement's decision to plunge into politics is not an exit plan as described by the Congress. This was the way forward , he said.