Tamil Nadu BJP President K Annamalai on Sunday said that nobody is saying Manmohan Singh is corrupt, but added that India does not need a leader who cannot take a decision. He said the country wants a functioning prime minister so that even 10 years from now, "when Pakistan and China decide to do a two-pronged attack on India at the same time, this country should be resilient enough to face it."
Manmohan Singh served as Prime Minister from 2004 to 2014. He was a member of the Rajya Sabha.
The BJP leader said that Prime Minister Modi faces six elections every year but he still takes decisions and convinces people to vote for him. "I am just giving you one example of a prime minister who is not accountable to the public because the prime minister is not elected. The prime minister doesn't have a constituency of his own? The prime minister doesn't go on campaign for every state election," he said while speaking at the Digital Conclave organised by Kerala BJP in Thiruvananthapuram.
Annamalai said that in this country, 6 elections the prime minister has to face every year. "People will judge the prime minister in six elections. Six elections people will ask the Prime Minister What have you done? So this prime minister has to take so much risk. Demonetisation before UP (election) - still you go and face (people). GST, you go and face (people)," he said.
The 39-year-old leader, under whose watch the BJP is hoping to expand in Tamil Nadu, said the essential nature of the Indian democracy is that a prime minister has to be a risk-taker and the prime minister has to face the public and convince the public and still make the public to vote. "This is a country that doesn't need stagnated solutions. No, I'm a prime minister. I will not make decisions because I have six elections every year. I will just keep quiet. If I make one decision, somebody will feel hurt - Kerala will feel hurt, Tamil Nadu will feel hurt. I will not make any decision, please vote. This country doesn't want prime ministers like that."
The former IPS officer, campaigning in Kerala after elections were over in Tamil Nadu, said that Prime Minister Modi had broken that mold to say - "I'm a performing prime minister. But every year I will face six elections. I will convince you to vote for us because my decision is right."
During the address, he suggested that the INDIA alliance can't even agree to one leader to be Prime Minister. He said that even if they found one, that person wouldn't be able to run the Cabinet as members will be from different parties and it would become difficult to act against a minister found to be doing something wrong.
"Now you tell me, in the INDIA alliance - will all leaders agree to a single leader who will be a prime minister? Question number two - even if all leaders agree to a single leader for Prime minister, will that person be able to run the Cabinet? Question number three. Even if this person is able to run the Cabinet if he has to pull up some minister for some wrong thing? X is Prime Minister, Y is from Mamata Banerjee's party. Z is from Arvind Kejriwal's party."
"If three answers are false, false, and false, then what are we looking at? We are looking at the country that will go to shambles if any of them decide that I am going to be the country's prime minister," he said.
Annamalai said that Rahul Gandhi, who is contesting from Wayanad, had no currency only in Kerala itself. "And many of his ideas if you implement, it is much worse than in the 1991 USSR. When somebody asked why the USSR collapsed...one communist gave a beautiful answer, the essence of communism is very simple - you got to act as if you are working, the government has to act as if it's watching. This is the essence of communism. If both of you break it, Communism will collapse. You built up an inefficient state, one fine day it collapsed when the whole world was opening up," he said in an apparent reference to Rahul Gandhi's wealth distribution promise.
The BJP leader said that it was a very important election for Kerala. "Kerala has to make a choice, and the choice has to be pro-development and the choices to move forward. This choice has to be very simple Kerala's human capital is reserved for Kerala state. When Kerala is prospering, India will prosper."
Voting for Kerala's 20 Lok Sabha seats will be held in the second phase on April 26.