A Poor Workman Blames His Tools

Desaraju Surya
Hyderabad: “A poor workman blames his tools,” it is said. Chiranjeevi has turned out to be the poor workman now.
In his 30-year-long filmy career, Chiranjeevi rose from the ranks to become the Megastar in the Telugu film industry and, in the process, won the hearts of crores of Telugu people.
But when he launched his Praja Rajyam Party and wanted to become the Chief Minister of Andhra Pradesh, people have rejected him outrightly. Elections-2009 made this amply clear.
It was a bitter pill for him to swallow, though he has been desperately trying to put on a brave face saying: “Playing the game is important, not whether we won or lost.”
Now, he has gone a step further and gave a rather ludicrous reason for the PRP’s electoral drubbing.
The “rail engine” symbol – allotted by the Election Commission -- proved to be the PRP’s nemesis in the recent Assembly and Lok Sabha elections, Chiranjeevi sought to reason.
“The rail engine symbol looked too tiny on the electronic voting machines that the voters could not recognize it. Symbols like loaf of bread, road-roller, bulldozer, tent and tractor looked large enough for the voters to easily identify. So they did not vote for PRP,” Chiranjeevi said.
Chiranjeevi’s claim is absolutely absurd. Indian voters, even if many of them are illiterate, are wise enough. Every political party and political leader will acknowledge that and never question the voters’ wisdom.
Now, if one is keen on voting for the PRP, he will certainly search for the party’s symbol carefully on either the electronic voting machine or the ballot paper and mark his choice. It is not at all a difficult task for the voter.
To say that the voters could not identify the rail engine on the EVM and hence voted on other symbols is utterly nonsensical and rubbish.
Chiranjeevi has made a fool of himself by making such claim. It grossly exposed how naïve he is.
Soon after he made the claim about the election symbol, I asked Chiranjeevi what were the lessons he learnt in the nine months of his political career, particularly after the PRP’s rout in the elections. “Everything has been a lesson for me. Every day teaches me a lesson. Even the loss in elections is a lesson in itself and I take it as my guru,” he replied. His assertion smacked of only arrogance and didn’t sound truthful.
Hopefully, the coming days would teach him better lessons and help him grow wiser, at least apparently.
Chiranjeevi also spoke of changing his party’s election symbol now that it becomes a “recognized” political party as per law. But can he change voters’ minds and hearts is the big question.