05-01-2012, 01:47 AM
Bofors and BJP
Quote:Bofors & the BJP
Fighting corruption is passe for the opposition party, says N.V.Subramanian.
30 April 2012: If the BJP is in a position to form a government in 2014, its prime minister will be one who is judged as a robust anti-corruption crusader. By that yardstick, almost no one in the present BJP central leadership stands a chance.
The RSS which takes all the key decisions in the BJP is disgusted with the party's unwillingness or inability to confront UPA-2 head-on on the corruption issue which has been one of the chief reasons for the Congress's rout in Uttar Pradesh and Delhi. The RSS is particularly galled by the BJP's defensiveness on the reopened Bofors scandal, with the former Swedish police chief, Sten Lindstrom, accusing Ottavio Quattrocchi of being the principal recipient of kickbacks in the Rs 64-crore howitzer deal.
Arun Jaitley, who has been in the forefront of opposition attempts to nail the Bofors scamsters since the late 1980s, has been smarting this past week on charges of a BJP-Congress deal on the gun scandal. He told a news TV interviewer to his face that this was a "figment of his imagination" and a load of "rubbish". But the allegations aren't dying down.
Ever since Rajiv Gandhi's political rise, Ottavio Quattrocchi has been socially linked to him and to his wife and now widow, Sonia Gandhi. There is enough evidence that past Congress governments gave Quattrocchi safe passage out of the country, prevented CBI from pursuing his case, withdrew red-corner Interpol notices, and permitted the Italian middleman to withdraw big monies from previously sealed UK bank accounts linked to the Bofors pay off.
But when Arun Jaitley debated the matter in Parliament, he made it a point not to take names, provoking allegations that he was soft-pedalling the issue. Arun Jaitley is one of the few politicians in public life who can claim to be clean. But his performance on the Bofors front has surprised and anguished his staunchest admirers. "A tree is judged by the fruits it bears," said a senior RSS functionary in reference to the BJP central leadership of L.K.Advani, Jaitley and Sushma Swaraj. And that cannot mean good news for them, and especially for Jaitley and Swaraj, who are in the 2014 running for PM.
When A.B.Vajpayee was prime minister, he was not keen to pursue the Bofors investigations to show political magnanimity towards the widow of an assassinated prime minister. Part of the squeamishness of the present-day BJP leadership in respect of the Bofors scandal arises from the confused signals given by Vajpayee. To go hammer and tongs against UPA-2 on Bofors would mean to repudiate Vajpayee. There is also the fact that eight years in the opposition has made the BJP soft. Jaitley is fond of quoting Napoleon who's supposed to have said, "Don't murder the man who is committing suicide." The only trouble with that is that the great conqueror ended up on the wrong side of history, which is the danger facing the BJP.
No opposition party has been granted so many opportunities as the BJP to push the corrupt and venal ruling dispensation to defeat, and everytime it has squandered its chance. In regard to corruption scandals, a pattern has emerged. Right after a scandal erupts, the BJP will raise the issue for a day or two and let it die subsequently, unless the RSS weighs in with a rebuke, whence a flurry of statements will ensue, all calculated to mollify the Nagpur minders.
Subramaniam Swamy is a doughty ally to have. But the BJP seems almost embarrassed to capitalize on his nearly weekly explosive revelations on 2G, mostly targeting home minister P.Chidambaram. Apropos Anna Hazare, the BJP was quite willing to pursue the "Parliament is supreme" line, calculated to bail out UPA-2, until the RSS blazed out. And on army chief General V.K.Singh's revelations of corruption, the BJP reflex was to play safe, until it was externally prodded.
The point is, the RSS cannot constantly remind the BJP of its public duties. Whatever Vajpayee's soft corner for the Nehru-Gandhis, the Bofors scandal is about misappropriated public monies, yours and mine, and they ought to be gotten back, however long it takes. When it involves government corruption, there can be no place or room for political niceties. And if BJP leaders today are found to be soft pedalling on corruption issues, they don't deserve power in 2014.