When Manmohan Singh famously asserted that his leadership is not weak

Months before he demitted the PM’s office in 2014, Manmohan Singh had famously asserted that his leadership was not weak and history would be kinder to him than what the media projected at that time.

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Addressing a press conference in January 2014, in what was one of his last media interactions, Manmohan had said, “I do not believe that I have been a weak Prime Minister ... I honestly believe that history will be kinder to me than the contemporary media or for that matter the Opposition in Parliament... Given the political compulsions, I have done the best I could do.”

“I have done as well as I could do according to the circumstances... It is for history to judge what I have done or what I have not done,” Manmohan, who was the Prime Minister for 10 years till Narendra Modi took charge on May 26, 2014.

He was responding to a volley of questions regarding criticism that his leadership was “weak” and he was not decisive on many occasions.

Manmohan had also chosen the press conference to launch a blistering attack on BJP’s then Prime Minister candidate Modi and referred to the 2002 Gujarat riots under the Chief Minister. The BJP at that time had projected Modi as a strong leader while targeting Manmohan over the issue of “weak” leadership in the run-up to the next Lok Sabha polls.

“I have full confidence that the next Prime Minister will be from the UPA... It will be disastrous for the country to have Narendra Modi as Prime Minister... I sincerely believe what Narendra Modi is saying is not going to materialise,” he had said.

Maintaining that his two terms as PM in UPA I and UPA II displayed the Congress’s ability to run a coalition government and dispelled the perception that his party could not run coalitions, Manmohan said though some compromises were made in the process, they were on “peripheral issues and not on national problems”.

“Nobody has asked me to step down because of any inadequacy that characterised my tenure as PM,” was his response when asked about “negative” perceptions within Congress about his leadership.