Anna Hazare protests grow as Indian officials seek compromise

Anti-corruption campaigner refuses to leave prison despite release warrant Indian officials are locked in negotiations with the country’s best-known anti-corruption campaigner as the government of Manmohan Singh frantically tries to roll back a growing wave of popular anger over his arrest. Protests in support of Anna Hazare, the 74-year-old activist whose detention on Tuesday sparked the crisis, have showed no signs of dying down and tens of thousands are continuing to demonstrate across India. Despite a hastily arranged release warrant, Hazare is refusing to leave the high-security Tihar prison in Delhi until the government allows him to mount a public hunger strike. The crisis is one of the most serious to strike the beleaguered coalition government so far. Singh attempted to take the initiative in a speech to parliament on Wednesday, explaining that the government was not against the anti-corruption campaigner’s motivations and objected only to his methods and immediate goals . “I acknowledge that Anna Hazare may be inspired by high ideals,” Singh said, over shouts and catcalls from the opposition. “However, the path that he has chosen to impose a draft of the bill on parliament is totally misconceived.” Government officials accuse Hazare of being anti-democratic and trying to “blackmail” elected representatives. Hazare is refusing to leave jail, where he has started a hunger strike, unless the government allows his protest against corruption to go ahead as originally intended. Thousands of supporters gathered outside the jail on Tuesday, some spending the night outside. Prashant Bhushan, a lawyer and key aide of Hazare, said the campaigner would “come out of Tihar jail only if the government agrees to his demands and releases him unconditionally”. The arrests of Hazare and more than a thousand followers, which the government says were necessary on public order grounds, has sparked deep indignation across India and allowed a weak and fragmented opposition to score points against the ruling Congress party. “It is a wake-up call for all of us unless we put our house in order. The people of this country are becoming restless,” said Arun Jaitley, a senior leader of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party. Hazare, a controversial figure whom opponents accuse of having links to Hindu nationalist fringe groups, has successfully invoked the memory of Mahatma Gandhi to mobilise vast reservoirs of anger within Indian society at endemic corruption, poor services and patchy governance. The administration has been weakened by a series of corruption scandals involving party officials, appointees or allies. Hazare, who is demanding tougher laws against graft, insists that before he leaves jail he wants the right to return to the city park where he had planned to fast publicly. Officials said they were hopeful of reaching a compromise by Wednesday night. Whatever the outcome, the episode will reinforce the impression among people from right and left that the elderly Singh is out of touch and that his government is too clumsy to govern Asia’s third-largest economy effectively. “Corrupt, repressive and stupid,” was the verdict of the leftwing Hindu newspaper. “Anna has the government fumbling,” ran a headline in the Mail Today, which follows a centre-right editorial line. Though some of the protests across India have been organised by political opponents of the Congress party, most seem to be independent. Calls have been made for civil servants to take leave and rickshaw drivers to strike. Hazare has carefully built his image, stressing links to Gandhi at every opportunity. In a pre-recorded video, released after his arrest, he called for a “second freedom struggle” against corruption. Gandhi led the first against British imperial rulers. Shops selling the type of hat linked to Gandhi and habitually worn by Hazare have sold out. Anna Hazare India Jason Burke guardian.co.uk

Posted by on August 17, 2011. Filed under News, Politics, World News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.