‘Anarchist’ Delhi Chief Ends Protest as Tactics Questioned

January 22, 2014 Leave a comment

Delhi ‘Anarchist’ Chief Minister Ends Sit-In as Tactics Queried

Delhi Chief Minister Arvind Kejriwal ended a sit-in that sought to gain control over the Indian capital’s police force after officers were put on leave and amid questions it might hurt his party’s general election prospects.A number of officers investigating cases of rape and sexual assault in New Delhi this month will be sent on paid leave, Kejriwal told supporters of his 14-month-old Aam Aadmi Party late yesterday when announcing the end of his nearly 33-hour protest. Kejriwal slept on the street on the night of Jan. 20 and described himself as an “anarchist” while speaking out against the police’s inability to curb violence against women.

Kejriwal’s methods risk alienating voters looking for an alternative to Prime Minister Manmohan Singh’s Congress party, which has seen its popularity slump amid an economic slowdown and Asia’s highest inflation. Aam Aadmi has sapped support from the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party’s Narendra Modi, who is seeking to end Congress’ 10-year rule in elections due by May.

“It’s setting a very bad example,” said Santosh Hegde, who was a member of the team behind the anti-corruption movement in 2011 that led to the formation of Aam Aadmi, which means “common man” in Hindi. “It’s very unfortunate that a chief minister is behaving like this. If we all decided to ignore the laws, there would be chaos.”

Kejriwal, 45, started the protest after police refused to take action when a member of his administration conducted a late-night raid of apartments on Jan. 15 where residents had reported drug trafficking. He had been demanding India’s central government transfer control of the New Delhi police to the state government.

Cordon

The raid followed the Jan. 14 gang rape of a 51-year-old Danish woman in a neighborhood popular with backpackers. Delhi Police have arrested two suspects who were part of a group that held the victim captive for five hours.

“We deal with every complaint by the law,” Delhi Police spokesman Rajan Bhagat said in a phone interview, when asked why officers didn’t make arrests. He refused to elaborate.

Police had cordoned off about 2.5 square kilometers (1 square mile), an area about two-thirds the size of New York City’s central park, in central New Delhi during the sit-in.

Kejriwal spent the night of Jan. 20 into 21 outside India’s railway ministry, which refused to let him use the building’s restroom until he complained on national television.

‘Anarchist’

“I am an anarchist,” Kejriwal, whose party took power in Delhi last month after a state election, said yesterday before the end of the sit-in. “I am in control of this city. No one can dictate where we will protest.”

Late yesterday, in announcing the protest was ending, he said: “We will continue our efforts to make the Delhi police serve the people of Delhi and be answerable to the Delhi government,” Kejriwal said late yesterday to the cheers of supporters. “This is a big victory for all the people.”

Meeting Kejriwal’s demand to have the police under control of the state government instead of the federal administration would require an amendment to India’s constitution, according to M.R. Madhavan, president and co-founder of New Delhi-based PRS Legislative Research, which tracks Indian legislation. Lawmakers have yet to propose a bill with such changes, he said.

Aam Aadmi won 28 of Delhi’s 70 assembly seats in an election last month, compared with 31 for the BJP and eight for Congress. It formed the state government with the backing of Congress lawmakers after the BJP declined to govern without a majority.

“They have an identity crisis,” said Neera Chandhoke, a former professor of politics at Delhi University who backed Aam Aadmi in the elections. “They are not able to make a transition from an agitation into a governance mode.”

For Related News and Information: India Divisions Deepen as Election Clouds Economic Outlook India Opposition Eyes 2014 Victory After Routing Singh in States Broom-Waving Voters Seek to Sweep Away India’s Elite

To contact the reporters on this story: Kartikay Mehrotra in New Delhi at kmehrotra2@bloomberg.net; Andrew MacAskill in New Delhi at amacaskill@bloomberg.net

Filed under Macro Trends

Unknown's avatarAbout bambooinnovator
Kee Koon Boon (“KB”) is the co-founder and director of HERO Investment Management which provides specialized fund management and investment advisory services to the ARCHEA Asia HERO Innovators Fund (www.heroinnovator.com), the only Asian SMID-cap tech-focused fund in the industry. KB is an internationally featured investor rooted in the principles of value investing for over a decade as a fund manager and analyst in the Asian capital markets who started his career at a boutique hedge fund in Singapore where he was with the firm since 2002 and was also part of the core investment committee in significantly outperforming the index in the 10-year-plus-old flagship Asian fund. He was also the portfolio manager for Asia-Pacific equities at Korea’s largest mutual fund company. Prior to setting up the H.E.R.O. Innovators Fund, KB was the Chief Investment Officer & CEO of a Singapore Registered Fund Management Company (RFMC) where he is responsible for listed Asian equity investments. KB had taught accounting at the Singapore Management University (SMU) as a faculty member and also pioneered the 15-week course on Accounting Fraud in Asia as an official module at SMU. KB remains grateful and honored to be invited by Singapore’s financial regulator Monetary Authority of Singapore (MAS) to present to their top management team about implementing a world’s first fact-based forward-looking fraud detection framework to bring about benefits for the capital markets in Singapore and for the public and investment community. KB also served the community in sharing his insights in writing articles about value investing and corporate governance in the media that include Business Times, Straits Times, Jakarta Post, Manual of Ideas, Investopedia, TedXWallStreet. He had also presented in top investment, banking and finance conferences in America, Italy, Sydney, Cape Town, HK, China. He has trained CEOs, entrepreneurs, CFOs, management executives in business strategy & business model innovation in Singapore, HK and China.

Leave a comment