INDIAN ANTI-CORRUPTION activist Anna Hazare promised his jubilant supporters his fight would continue after ending a 12-day hunger strike in New Delhi yesterday that pressured Parliament into considering his anti-graft demands.
“It’s the end of my fast but it’s not the end of my fight. I will be back,” Mr Hazare (74) told a massive flag-waving and cheering crowd minutes after accepting a glass of coconut water and honey that ended the fast in which he lost 7.5kg.
“It’s a proud moment for the country that a mass movement, which was carried out for 13 days, was peaceful and non-violent,” the diminutive Hazare said at an open ground in Delhi that has become the focus of the nationwide crusade against corruption.
The people’s parliament is bigger than Delhi’s parliament, he told the ecstatic gathering.
Mr Hazare’s move came a day after MPs expressed support for proposed changes to legislation to establish a powerful anti-corruption ombudsman to police everyone from the prime minister to the lowest civil servant.
Prime minister Manmohan Singh’s government had earlier maintained that Mr Hazare’s version of the draft Bill was unconstitutional and his hunger strike an attempt to subvert parliament’s legislative role.
Mr Hazare and his aides, however, complained that the government’s Bill was too weak to battle the deep rot in Indian officialdom, besieged by multibillion-dollar corruption scandals involving senior ministers and officials.
Parliament eventually held a nine-hour debate on Saturday that ended with a non-binding “sense of the House” expressing support for Mr Hazare’s demands.
It committed itself to greater transparency and the inclusion of low-level bureaucrats and state officials under the proposed watchdog’s purview.
Mr Hazare’s version of the Bill along with the governments and at least two others would now be processed by a special parliamentary committee and tabled in the House to become law over the next few months.
After breaking his fast Mr Hazare said the next step would be to make India’s electoral system more responsive to the people by giving citizens the right to recall and reject MPs and provincial legislators who did not live up to their electoral promises and resorted to widespread corruption.
Mr Hazare’s protest was fuelled by a slew of scandals – including illicit mining deals, sale of telecommunication licences and last year’s Commonwealth Games – and supported by millions of Indians outraged over payment of bribes at all levels of their daily existence.
The government, miscalculating the popularity of Mr Hazare’s movement, briefly arrested him last week, a move that triggered mass but peaceful protests that shook the government’s confidence. As the protest dragged on and Mr Hazare’s health became critical, ministers and protest leaders haggled over how to end the stand-off and finally reached an agreement on Saturday.
It seems likely lawmakers will now have to take the issue of corruption seriously or risk further protests.