India set to elect first female President

INDIA: Pratibha Patil, the demure-looking 72-year-old politician set to become India’s first woman President, has her work cut out to win the country’s confidence. A virtual political unknown, her victory is set to be announced this weekend after the Opposition conceded defeat in the vote Thursday for the largely ceremonial post of Head of State.

The voting followed a savage debate over the past month about her fitness for the job. Analysts have described the presidential campaign as the most vitriolic in India’s 60 years of independence.

Patil, a native of the Western state of Maharashtra, was championed by ruling Congress party president Sonia Gandhi, who said her election would help the cause of gender equality.

Patil, also has a tough act to follow in outgoing president Abdul Kalam, whose bid for a second term was rebuffed by Congress. The silver-haired, shaggy-locked missile scientist was dubbed the “People’s President” for his populist style and large following.

Patil, a lawyer who dresses conservatively in a sari pulled over her hair, has been mocked for revealing to a television audience that a dead spiritual guru gave her a “divine premonition of greater responsibility.”

Alongside opposition attacks, the media has been busy digging up skeletons from the bespectacled Patil’s past. In India, Presidential candidates and their families are traditionally expected to be free from any scandal.

Even though she has spent nearly a half century in politics, the Rajasthan governor was an obscure figure nationally until Gandhi’s nod for her nomination vaulted her to the front-pages.

A long-time supporter of the late prime minister Indira Gandhi and a staunch Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty loyalist, Patil is on friendly terms with Indira’s daughter-in-law, Sonia. “She is basically a hardcore Congress party loyalist, that’s why she got the nod,” said political analyst Mahesh Rangarajan. The key question going forward, said analysts, was whether she would be able to resist the pressures of the ruling coalition and act independently.

Under the constitution, the prime minister wields most of the executive power but the president plays a role in forming government at the state and federal levels, which makes the job hotly contested. “We have to wait and watch but there is very little in her past to inspire confidence,” said Rangarajan.

New Delhi, Friday, AFP