New Year message from Shri L.K. Advani

Wednesday, 31 December 2008

Let us end despair and usher in hope in 2009

Dear countrymen, Tonight we bid goodbye to 2008 and welcome 2009. On behalf of my Party, the Bharatiya Janata Party, my alliance, the National Democratic Alliance, and on my own behalf, I wish all of you a very Happy, Prosperous and Secure New Year. 2008 has been a traumatic year for India both in respect of its economy as well as its security. The trauma has been mainly on account of the kind of government we have had in New Delhi. The most important lesson that the outgoing year teaches us is that India cannot afford to have a government in which the Prime Minister has no real authority, and the leader who has the authority has no accountability. I have always believed that our country has immense potential to progress. But this potential has not been fully unleashed. This situation must be changed, and I believe that it can be changed. For this, all the stakeholders in India’s democracy need to adhere to two imperatives: Good Politics and Good Governance. By Good Politics I mean honesty, incorruptibility and the readiness to place the interests of the country and the common man above one’s own or party interests. By Good Governance, I mean: commitment to development, security and probity in public life. And by development is meant India’s all round development, by making the poor of all communities, and not any particular community, the first claimant to the country’s resources. Let us together resolve to end despair and usher in hope. Once again, I wish you a very Happy New Year. Sd/: (L.K. Advani) Leader of the Opposition (Lok Sabha)