Rahul Gandhi was speaking to faculty and students at America's Brown University.
New Delhi:
Congress leader Rahul Gandhi on Tuesday said that Iraq's dictator Saddam Hussein and Libya's Muammar Gaddafi used to win elections as well, as he scaled up his attack on Prime Minister Narendra Modi for India's dwindling status in global democracy metrics.
"Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi used to have elections. They used to win them. It wasn't like they weren't voting but there was no institutional framework to protect that vote," he said In an online interaction with Brown University professor Ashutosh Varshney, faculty and students.
"An election is not simply people going and pressing a button on a voting machine. An election is about narrative. An election is about institutions that make sure that the framework in the country is operating properly, an election is about the judiciary being fair and a debate taking place in parliament. So you need those things for a vote to count," he said.