Hegde Asks Vajpayee To Be Firm And Tough

Commerce minister Ramakrishna Hegde has advised Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee to be firm and tough to keep the BJP-led coalition intact and if necessary to reshuffle his cabinet after the Budget session of Parliament.

Asked whether Vajpayee was asserting himself sufficiently as Prime Minister, Hegde said in an interview to a private television channel that the Prime Minister should have asserted (himself) when unreasonable demands were made. Many people say perhaps he committed a mistake.

The Lok Shakti leader, however, declined to give specific instances of what he considered unreasonable demands saying, I cannot attribute this to any particular incident or action. It is perhaps the cumulative effect.

 

Asked what advice he would give to Vajpayee to improve the governments performance and its image, he said he has to be firm and has to be tough if necessary in the interest of keeping his coalition intact. He has to perhaps choose his colleagues (carefully) and if necessary reshuffle his cabinet, perhaps after the Budget session.

By that time he (Vajpayee) will know whose aptitude is what, so he can move the right people for the right job, he said.

On the performance of the Vajpayee government which will complete two months on May 19, he said he was not fully satisfied and called it a period of unpleasantness.

He explained that this was due to the fact that the government was an arranged marriage and not a love marriage.

Replying to a question, Hegde said he did not think Vajpayee was a weak person. He looks physically weak but I dont think mentally he is weak. Mostly it is physical fatigue which makes him look rather weak.

Anybody in his place under the same pressure, under the same stress, would have been broken, completely broken. I dont think he has any respite for himself, Hegde said.

May be he is slightly disappointed, he remarked, adding he (Vajpayee) must have expected, as any one in his place would that this coalition, which was elected to provide a different kind of government, would work more or less smoothly. But it is not working because several elements have taken a certain stand.

Asked whether law minister M Thambiduaris public comment that the cases against Jayalalitha were political was appropriate, Hegde said if I were in his position I would not have made that statement.