As the coun­try gets ready for the elec­tion of a new Pres­i­dent, one of the most im­por­tant ques­tions is what are the qual­i­ties of a Pres­i­dent?The of­fice of Pres­i­dent is qua­si-cer­e­mo­ni­al and the ap­point­ment of a Pres­i­dent rests with the par­ty with the ma­jor­i­ty in pow­er.

One must care­ful­ly ex­am­ine the pos­si­bil­i­ty and dan­gers of po­lit­i­cal in­flu­ence on the of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.

Some is­sues which brought the of­fice of the Pres­i­dent in­to ques­tion are: the pro­longed pe­ri­od it took to ap­point mem­bers of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and sub­se­quent res­ig­na­tion of mem­bers, procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34 and the sub­se­quent call by the Pres­i­dent for an ex­pla­na­tion from the PM, the award of Silk to the Chief Jus­tice, the sus­pen­sion of for­mer Chief Jus­tice Sat Shar­ma and re­vo­ca­tion of the sus­pen­sion fol­low­ing the re­ceipt of the Mustill Re­port, and the procla­ma­tion of a State of Emer­gency to deal with crime.

In or­der to avoid such con­tro­ver­sies in the fu­ture one must choose from among the po­ten­tial can­di­dates some­one with the fol­low­ing qual­i­ties: hon­esty, in­tegri­ty, and courage. He/ she must have a good work­ing knowl­edge of the con­sti­tu­tion, and must not be aligned to any po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

The of­fice of the Pres­i­dent must re­main in­de­pen­dent and free from po­lit­i­cal in­ter­fer­ence and per­sua­sion if it is to re­store its cred­i­bil­i­ty and the Elec­toral Col­lege now holds the pow­er to en­sure that this be­comes pos­si­ble by ex­am­in­ing the po­ten­tial can­di­dates and, in the fi­nal analy­sis, the choice must be some­one who is least con­tro­ver­sial.

The Pres­i­dent may en­joy spe­cial priv­i­leges be­cause of his of­fice; he should re­mem­ber that he is a ser­vant of the peo­ple and not their mas­ter. Ex­ces­sive va­ca­tions, ex­ces­sive spend­ing dur­ing times of eco­nom­ic un­cer­tain­ty, and a haughty at­ti­tude are not ap­pre­ci­at­ed.

While we should have a Pres­i­dent with good char­ac­ter traits, they are of­ten hard to find. If we are to mea­sure our so­ci­ety by the time it took to find peo­ple to serve on the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, there may be a short sup­ply of peo­ple with in­tegri­ty, or if all the good peo­ple are too busy do­ing oth­er things then is­sues of char­ac­ter–hon­esty and in­tegri­ty–will be lost and the cit­i­zens will even­tu­al­ly pay the ul­ti­mate price.

Shyankaran Lal­la

Rail­way Road

Cal­i­for­nia