PM's media address a farce; seemed bitter towards Modi: Arun Jaitley

NEW DELHI: Calling Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's press conference a 'farce', BJP leader Arun Jaitley on Friday said, "Except for the announcement of the fact that he is unavailable for future leadership, the rest of the press conference was a formality."

Slamming Singh, Jaitley questioned the logic that 2009 election results were indicative of people's mandate and not the recent state assembly elections. " PM kept looking for points to show that his government did good governance. He manufactured a new logic that corruption happened during the tenure of UPA-I. According to him, electoral sanction wipes out corruption," Jaitley said.

"If PM were to be believed, then corruption ceased to be corruption or was no longer accepted by people as being corruption," he said. "If we go by the same logic, then the performance of Congress in the recent state elections puts a complete stamp of failure on the party," he said. "You cannot have a different yardstick for measuring two outcomes," he added.

Jaitley went on to say that Singh appeared to be bitter towards Narendra Modi. "The benefit of his very same logic can then be extended to Modi as well. If electoral mandates are proof of sanctity, then Modi has won two elections since the riots," Jaitley added.

Calling the combined problems of corruption, unemployment and inflation a 'recipe for disaster', Jaitley said, "PM admitted that his government failed to curb corruption, check unemployment and contain inflation."

The most frequently used sentences by the PM were, 'Time will tell' and 'It is for historians to write', said Jaitley. "In a democracy time doesn't tell, voters tell us. Voters tell us more emphatically," he said. "From what voters are likely to tell us, it is bad news for the Congress party. The bad news is mainly because of the failures of the Manmohan Singh government," Jaitley hit out.

In a major announcement, Manmohan Singh on Friday ruled out a third term for himself, stating that he will hand over the baton to a new Prime Minister after the 2014 general elections. "In few months, after elections, I will hand the baton over to a new PM. I hope it will be a UPA PM," Singh said.

Asked about how a likely competition between Rahul Gandhi and BJP's PM candidate Narendra Modi may pan out, Singh said, "Without commenting on Narendra Modi's credentials, I would like to say that Narendra Modi as India's Prime Minister will be disastrous for the country."

"If you measure the strength of Prime Minister by presiding over mass massacre of innocent citizens on streets of Ahmedabad, then I do not believe in it," he hit out.

When a questioner asked him about Modi's campaign theme of a Congress-free India, Singh shot back, "I sincerely believe what Narendra Modi is saying, it is not going to materialise."

Singh said that the Congress party will announce its candidate for Prime Minister at an 'appropriate' time. "I am confident that the new generation of our leaders will also guide this great nation successfully," he said.

Asked about the likelihood of Rahul Gandhi being named as Congress's PM candidate, Singh said, "Rahul Gandhi has outstanding credentials."