ELECTION 99
US EDITION
COLUMNISTS
DIARY
SPECIALS
INTERVIEWS
CAPITAL BUZZ
REDIFF POLL
DEAR REDIFF
THE STATES
YEH HAI INDIA!
ELECTIONS
ARCHIVES

Search Rediff

Thakre assures full party backing for Vajpayee govt

Bharatiya Janata Party president Kushabhau Thakre today justified some ''hard decisions'' taken by the Atal Bihari Vajpayee government and assured the party's full backing to such decisions which are ''meant to ameliorate the economic situation of the country.''

''The party and the government can together, through their joint effort, provide good governance. If we fail in this endeavour, then we will have only ourselves to blame,'' he said in the presidential address to the party's two-day national executive meeting, the first after the BJP-led coalition came to power at the Centre.

Thakre observed that the Vajpayee government had begun work in right earnest. ''Let us back it up with full organisational support,'' he added.

Decades of ''cynical abuse of power by the Congress'' had greatly weakened institutions that ''act as the pillars of our democracy,'' he said. The ''populist economics'' of the Congress in its 45-year-rule had gravely undermined the national economy, he claimed.

The government would have to take some tough decisions to ameliorate the situation, he asserted and expressed the hope that the people were alert enough to understand the imperative behind these decisions ''that are bound to have a beneficial impact in the long term.''

He called upon the partymen to mobilise all their skills to explain to the people the need for such decisions to prepare the country to face challenges of the next century. ''We have to convince the people that mere sloganeering would not deliver good governance,'' he added.

UNI

Tell us what you think of this report