Ok, question of the day, which female Indian politician said the following words recently?
Today, after close to five years in office, my government believes that it has acted on nearly all the commitments made to the people through National Common Minimum Programme.
Heh, you’re thinking, too easy. It’s a female politician, and she said ‘my government’, so obviously it’s Sonia Gandhi.
Wrong answer.
It’s Pratibha Patil who uttered the above words. That’s right, the president of India, who is supposed to be a neutral figurehead, was boasting about the performance of the UPA government. WTFness emanates from the highest offices of this country, it does.
(HT: Raja Agrawal. Earlier, on Patil…)
Update: The WTF is on me this time. Ravikiran, Mohan, Suresh and Shoaib write in separately to point out that the president’s annual address to parliament is actually written by the government of the day, and she has no say in what goes in it. She has to stick to the script prepared for her, and if a Narendra Modi-led government was in power, would have to boast about the performance of that government as per the script given to her. I suppose that custom is a WTF custom—but in this case, her speech isn’t. My bad.
But just think if the government gets mischievous here. If she has no option but to read out the script given to her, they could put in anything just for fun. Like, “My government has procured 8,824 pink panties for the state of Mangalore. We also plan to turn the Rashtrapati Bhavan into a pub. We want your body, body, we want your body.” The possibilities are endless…