More often than not, politicians think public memory is very short. They are of view that they could fool around the voters by making tall promises and ignore them conveniently after coming to power, since people generally don't remember the past.
But this is the age of social media. Even if people forget what the leaders had said in the past, the social media is ready to dig out the past of these leaders to expose their bluff.
And rival political parties extensively make use of the social media to take a dig at them, reminding the people of what these leaders had said in the past and what they are doing now.
Take the case of Telugu Desam Party president and Andhra Pradesh chief minister N Chandrababu Naidu.
He has taken yet another U-turn by joining hands with Congress president Rahul Gandhi on Thursday, conveniently ignoring what he had said in the past about the Congress, its past president Sonia Gandhi and her son Rahul Gandhi.
When some media persons pointed this out to him in New Delhi, Naidu said the TDP and the Congress had decided to forget the past and concentrate on the present and future for the sake of restoration of democracy.
So, suddenly Naidu has realized that the Congress is a party that can uphold democracy forgetting what he had said about the same party in the past.
Within hours, the social media circulated Naidu’s tweets before 2014 elections, when he forged an alliance with the BJP and later joined the National Democratic Alliance.
Commenting on the UPA cabinet decision’s bifurcate combined Andhra Pradesh state in October 2013, Naidu tweeted: “Sonia’s obsession to make Rahul PM puts nation’s future at stake for personal agenda.”
After the UPA government got the bifurcation bill passed in parliament in February 2014, Naidu tweeted again: “Selfishness, greed lead AP Congress leaders fall on the feet of Sonia Gandhi. History from 1983 will repeat. TDP will wipe out the Congress.”
When the TDP decided to join the alliance with the BJP, the TDP leader said: “Our aim is to make nation free of corrupt Congress. Will do whatever is best to ensure it. History shows we were unselfish in our alliances.”
And after the NDA won the Lok Sabha elections in May 2014, Naidu tweeted: “India has rejected the corruption, misrule and the anarchy of the Congress. Thanking the voters for trusting the NDA.”
Now, the YSRC has started circulating these tweets extensively to exposing Naidu’s repeated U-turns on his political stands.
Who knows he might come up with a new argument to return to the NDA, if Modi comes back to power again in 2019?
