Gun scandal back to haunt
Gandhis By Ranjit Devraj
NEW
DELHI - Allegations of bribery in a deal to buy Swedish
artillery peaked all of 18 years ago, but continue to
threaten the fortunes of India's opposition Congress
party and that of the Nehru-Gandhi political dynasty in
the current election season.
Congress leaders
are now questioning the timing of devastating statements
made by a Swedish investigator, Sten Lindstrom, and
published on April 8 by the Asian Age newspaper as its
main lead, two weeks before India is set to go into the
first phase of a staggered four-stage elections on April
20.
In the statement, Lindstrom - who was tasked
with investigating the Howitzer deal for 18 years -
suggested that Sonia Gandhi, president of Congress and
heir to the Nehru-Gandhi political mantle, be questioned
on who exactly benefited from alleged kickbacks in the
US$1.2 billion deal.
Lindstrom's statement has
thrown Congress into disarray. Already, the party is
busy fending off a political campaign against Sonia
Gandhi's possible candidature for the prime minister's
job, on the grounds that she is of Italian birth.
Said an exasperated Gandhi at a weekend
political rally: "The timing of this [Bofors issue]
being brought up again speaks for itself. This bogey of
Bofors has been raised for the last 18 years - it was
thrust on my husband [Rajiv Gandhi], now on me very
conveniently and God knows one day on my great
grandchildren."
Gandhi also accused the ruling
and right-wing Bharatiya Janata Party (BJP) of raking up
the Bofors issue to cover up for the "inability of the
[Prime Minister Atal Bihari] Vajpayee government to
solve the real problems facing the country".
The
issue first surfaced in 1987 when Swedish Radio revealed
that the then ailing Bofors company had paid bribes to
unnamed Indian figures to secure the deal. It seemed
there was nothing Rajiv Gandhi, then prime minister,
could do to avoid making the charges stick.
Gandhi was known to have favored the funding of
Congress through commissions on arms and other
government purchases rather through the usual method of
collecting money from businessmen in return for licenses
that ensured monopolies in India's large and protected
markets.
Over time, such protectionism given to
Indian businessmen and industrialists became responsible
for a steady deterioration in the quality of goods that
they brazenly released in the Indian markets.
On
example was the clunky Ambassador car, originally
designed in the early 1950s, but which was allowed to
have a near monopoly of the Indian car market for four
decades until India was compelled to embark on a program
of economic reforms by the World Bank.
Whatever
Rajiv Gandhi's intentions were, the massive scandal
raised over the Bofors deal cost him and Congress the
1989 general elections and the political pre-eminence it
has enjoyed through most of its 115-year-old history.
Out of power, Gandhi declared that he was ready
to come clean on the whole deal and also rid Congress of
"power brokers". But he was assassinated at an election
rally in 1991.
Curiously, the Swedish prime
minister at the time of the Bofors deal, Olaf Palme, was
also assassinated, leading to the widespread speculation
that both leaders had fallen victim to ruthless players
in the international arms bazaar.
The Bofors
curse was later to touch British Prime Minister Tony
Blair when the British press linked him to one of the
alleged agents of the Howitzer deal, the London-based
Indian arms dealer family of the Hindujas.
Blair's cabinet colleague Peter Mandelson was
forced to resign in January 2001 following allegations
that he had helped one of the Hinduja brothers to gain
British citizenship out of turn.
Although
logically the Bofors scandal in India should have ended
with Rajiv Gandhi's assassination in 1991, the case has
dragged on interminably, with each twist and turn either
helping or harming Congress.
It was just on
February 3 this year that the Delhi High Court finally
absolved Rajiv Gandhi of personal involvement in the
deal - in what is regarded as a most important political
verdict since his widow is to lead Congress into the
April/May elections.
But the celebrations were
to be short-lived. This month's statements by the
Swedish investigator Lindstrom have brought Congress
back to square one. This is especially because Lindstrom
has named Ottavio Qattrochi, an Italian businessman and
close friend of the Gandhi family, as one of the
recipients of the Bofors kickbacks.
There are
now calls from top BJP leaders that Sonia Gandhi be
taken in for questioning by the Central Bureau of
Investigation (CBI), the country's premier sleuthing
agency.
So far, the bureau has made no move to
question her and Ram Jethmalani, an eminent lawyer who
served as law minister in the Vajpayee cabinet, has
described the episode as a clear gimmick designed to
damage Congress and its leader.
"Now that the
foreign origin [of Sonia Gandhi] has failed to make an
impression on voters, they are raking up the Bofors
issue again," Jethmalani, who has always been a vocal
critic of Congress, told reporters.
"There is no
basis on which Sonia Gandhi can be questioned by the CBI
as she was not even a public servant at the time the
Bofors deal was concluded," he said. They [the BJP] are
just trying to pin her down before the elections."
