Senior BJP leader Arun Jaitley today claimed that a strong anti-incumbency mood, similar to 1977 and 1989, was prevailing in India and that leadership potential will dictate the outcome of the general elections in 2014.
"From all the indications that I gather, there is a huge, more than what we expected, anti-incumbency mood which has emerged in the country," Jaitley, the Leader of Opposition in the Rajya Sabha said here during an address at the International Peace Institute.
He said the anti-incumbency mood is "unprecedented" and resembles the one that existed in 1977 and 1989 when governments that had comfortable majority lost by a huge margin.
He said that the Indian electorate is looking for an "alternative" since people see the governance of the last few years "as a major leadership failure."
He added that as far as the economic management of the country is concerned, the head of the government or the Prime Minister must have the last word.
"He has to be the natural leader of the country and has to be the natural leader of the party. He has to have the last word and have the ability to overrule others. If he does not have all these rights, this authority, he is a Prime Minister who is in office but really not wielding authority ."
"This really has been the bane of the problem in the last few years," he added.
Jaitley said that creation of power centres outside the government, whose command runs with the government and which become authority without responsibility, also contributed to the angry anti-incumbency mood.
He said a strong factor that has emerged out of disillusionment with leadership, indecisiveness, lack of capacity to take decision is "creating an environment where though we are a parliamentary democracy, the the next election is almost becoming a quasi referendum on leadership.
