UPA regime like communist state: LK Advani

NEW DELHI: Sharpening the opposition's attack on the government and PM Manmohan Singh, senior BJP leader L K Advani on Thursday equated the UPA regime to that of a "Communist state" where the party chief has greater powers than the PM and called Singh the "weakest Prime Minister" that he has seen.

"I sometimes feel sorry for this government... About the Prime Minister I had said (in 2004), I respect him, but today I sympathise with him. What kind of a Prime Minister is he? I have not seen such a weak PM... People tell me he is a good man... but I am not making a personal remark... I am making a political comment," Advani said.
Advani recalled that when he had attacked Manmohan Singh in the run-up to the Lok Sabha polls in 2009, Singh had called him "irresponsible" and even said the BJP leader had attacked him for winning the elctions.

"But today the Supreme Court has called it plunder by government," the senior BJP leader added, referring to the cases of corruption ( 2G spectrum, CWG, Adarsh) that have surfaced against the government.

Reminiscing his days as a journalist when he learnt that in Russia the Communist party chief's position was higher than that of the head of state (during the Krushchev-Bulganin regime), Advani drew a parallel with Congress chief Sonia Gandhi-Manmohan Singh relationship. "...But now I am surprised that here too, we have a Communist state where the party president is more important than the Prime Minister," he said.