Sushma asks for Presidential system of gov

New Delhi, Nov 19: Senior BJP leader Sushma Swaraj today argued for reviewing the electoral system and replacing it with Presidential system of governance to overcome demerits witnessed in the Parliamentary system where the country is headed by a Prime Minister, who is incapable of mustering support within his own Parliamentary constituency.

Stating that Parliamentary system has its own 'demerits', Ms Swaraj, who is Deputy Leader of the BJP in Rajya Sabha in her article in 'Samadhan', a special supplement of Kamal Sandesh, a publication brought out by Shyama Prasad Mukherjee, said that a leader in the present system fails to strike a direct rapport with the people.

The electorate elect their representatives who in turn choose a Chief Minister in a state or Prime Minister at the federal level and the system leaves scope for manipulations and making and unmaking of the alliances. If it is a one-party rule, there is less scope for such possibilities but during the last decade, the era of coalition, the scope for manipulation are great, she said.

To get rid of the current malice where the political parties were according importance to castes than the merit of the candidate or his commitment to the party and ideology. The process got vitiated by the money, caste and muscle power and there was an urgent need for changing the environment.

She said if a Prime Minister is to be chosen by an all India vote, no leader could ignore any part of the country be it Jammu and Kasmir or desert state of Rajasthan, the peninsular south or the far away north-East. The leader will have to be fully acquainted with pan Indian diversity and understand the problems of the country and come out with composite and comprehensive solution. Curses like caste, regionalism, linguistic barrier would cease to exist and the country will knit into a unit, she argued.

Ms Swaraj said large part of time and effort of Chief Minister's in states and Prime Minister at the national level was spent on 'managing' his supporting MLAs or MPs. Such a situation could be avoided by maintaining direct contact with people and finding solution. No such leader would be dubbed as 'weak', nor somebody will be a 'super PM', and the leader would be responsible to people and no one else, she remarked.

The BJP leader said both the Legislature and the Executive had been facing devaluation and steady decline in democratic morals from Parliament to Panchayat level and had become a topic of intense debate in cities and villages, but yet nobody wanted to break their silence under this 'uncomfortable' situations and she was only making an attempt to 'diagnose' the malady.

If there has to be pan Indian elections, the leaders would make effort to understand the country to make themselves acceptable to the country transcending the state borders and merit and competence would get due recognition.

The Left parties were opposed to such an election because their sphere of influence does not go beyond the states of West Bengal, Kerala and Tripura. In some states they don't even exist. The present situation would suit them because they can manipulate the Prime Minister's office and they can't think of doing that in a presidential system.

Referring to the corruption instances involving MPs' in cash for query scam or seeking a cut in the MPLAD funds and the bulldozing of Office of Profit Bill to save the skin of certain individual MPs, ignoring the objections raised by President A P J Abdul Kalam, Ms Swaraj said when the building gets weak, it starts crumbling brick by brick and ultimately the whole structure would collapse.

UNI