The office of the President of India is the highest constitutional office in India’s parliamentary democracy. No wonder then if election to the office of the President generates some high political drama and public pretension.

After weeks of speculation, the Congress has finally declared former Maharashtra Pradesh Congress chief and current Governor of Rajasthan Pratibha Patil as its presidential candidate. With the support of other UPA partners, the Left Front and the BSP, she should have the numbers to see her through the elections. In other words, within a few weeks India may well have her first woman President. Sections of the media have already begun discussing if the vernacular term for President – Rashtrapati – will foot the bill for a woman President or a new term needs to be coined to describe the first woman occupant of the highest constitutional office. The possible victory of a woman President is also being described simultaneously as the fall of one of India’s last unconquered male bastions – the armed forces! After all, does not the President of India also serve as the Supreme Commander of the Armed Forces?

Indeed, the UPA-Left camp would like us to believe that a woman occupying the Rashtrapati Bhavan is the greatest symbol of women’s empowerment in the sixtieth year of the country’s Independence. Nothing could be more pretentious than this rhetoric of empowerment. The women’s reservation bill has been lying in Parliament’s cold storage for more than ten years now. Following six years of NDA rule, the UPA too has completed three years in office and in all these three years it never had the time to table the women’s reservation bill. If having a woman as President is the way to advance the cause of women’s empowerment why did the Congress not support the candidature of Captain Laxmi Sehgal in 2002 instead of joining hands with the NDA even as Gujarat was still burning?

If the Congress wants to utilise the Presidential poll to drive a wedge in the NDA – it expects the Shiv Sena to break ranks with the BJP and support a Maharashtrian in her race to the highest office – while pretending to champion the cause of women’s empowerment, the BJP and its NDA partners are also no less desperate to hoodwink the public. Their claim is that their man BS Shekhawat is an independent candidate for the office. It seems ever since the NDA was ousted from office in May 2004 there is nothing official about the NDA any more! It may be a nice opportunist way to attract a few ‘secular’ votes to the NDA kitty, but can the mere pretension of ‘independence’ whitewash a man’s lifelong association with the communal politics of the Sangh Parivar? Or has the BJP now become so apologetic about its own political identity that it sees greater political virtue in pretending to be independent than in beating its drum of being the only party with a difference?

The CPI(M) and its Left allies began with a profound political claim that the President’s post being a political office they wanted only an experienced politician to occupy it. And then came the suggestion that Pranab Mukherjee could be the best choice in the present circumstances! This is the CPI(M)’s way of telling us that the political experience of the Congress leadership (and by implication the Congress policies, for experience is accumulated on the basis of policies) is the best asset that can stand the country in good stead in today’s crucial juncture. Or was there also the additional consideration of keeping post-Nandigram Bengal in good humour by sending a Bengali for the first time to the Rashtrapati Bhavan! With the Congress never showing any enthusiasm on Mukherjee’s name, the Left leaders are now left celebrating the candidature of Pratibha tai while clamouring, and possibly contending among themselves, for the Vice-President’s post!

The President’s is indeed a political post. The President not only represents the country in the international arena, he or she has a crucial constitutional say in many major issues of domestic policy and governance. And of course the President can always play a big role in mooting ideas and mobilising public opinion. In the past we have seen important leaders of the Congress and BJP come up with the idea of introducing a US-style Presidential system in India and most recently we have heard the incumbent President advocate two-party rule on the occasion of the 150th anniversary of India’s First War of Independence. Ironically, by undermining the independent voice of the Left and reducing India’s largest ever parliamentary bloc of the Left to a mere ‘Left wing’ of the Congress-led coalition, the CPI(M) is only playing into the ruling classes’ two-party game plan.

The CPI(ML) rejects this sinister design and in keeping with its principled opposition to the policy platforms underpinning the UPA and the NDA, the party refuses to support either of the two candidates for the highest constitutional office.