India has a new (female) president
Wow! The times they are a changing…
India elected Pratibha Patil as the country’s first female president Saturday in a vote seen as a victory for the hundreds of millions of Indian women who contend with widespread discrimination.
Patil received 65.82 percent of the votes cast by national lawmakers and state legislators, said Election Commission head P.D.T. Achary. She had been widely expected to win.
Patil, the 72-year-old candidate of the governing Congress party and its political allies, defeated incumbent Vice President Bhairon Singh Shekhawat, the candidate of the opposition Bharatiya Janata Party.
“I am grateful to the people of India, to all the men and women of India,” Patil said in a brief statement to reporters. “This is a victory of the principles of which our Indian people uphold,” she said flashing the victory sign to her supporters.
Her candidacy was dogged by unprecedented mudslinging from the moment it was agreed upon by coalition members, marring the usually genteel process of presidential elections.
Hundreds of delighted Congress supporters danced in the streets as the results were announced, banging drums and setting off firecrackers outside her home in New Delhi and in her hometown in the state of Maharashtra.
Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Sonia Gandhi—the head of the Congress party—were among the first to visit her home to congratulate her. She will be sworn in for a five-year term as India’s 13th president on July 25.
The election of a woman to the largely ceremonial post continues an Indian tradition using the presidency to bolster disadvantaged communities.
Hindu-majority India has had three Muslim presidents, including incumbent A. P. J. Abdul Kalam, since winning independence from Britain in 1947. It has also had a president from the minority Sikh community, and Kalam’s predecessor, K. R. Narayanan, came from the bottom of the society’s complex social hierarchy.
While India has had several women in positions of power—most notably Indira Gandhi, who was elected to the more powerful position of prime minister in 1966, and her daughter-in-law, Sonia Gandhi_ many women still face rampant discrimination.
READ: India Names First Female President
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Anon on this one.. but India went from a the most qualified President to the most inept president…who cares? President plays no role in India on anything. They are just figure heads.