The unfolding events across the Palk Straits cannot go unnoticed here.
From about ten days ago, a huge gathering storm has all but eclipsed the clouds of volcanic ash from Iceland. It concerns the multi-million dollar mega-extravaganza called the Indian Premier League (IPL) involving the who's who of Indian business and show-biz, said to be the sixth largest sporting event in the world. It has transformed cricket into an entertainment and then a business.
Unfortunately, it has hit the very foundations of the Indian Government, and the ruling Congress coalition moved swiftly in the early stages to ward off any backlash. But on Friday, it was unable to contain the fallout as the bubble burst. The joint Opposition in Parliament has asked that investigations into the murky deals, the slush funds, the undeclared wealth, the deal-fixing, the kickbacks, the nepotism and the whole gamut of sleaze be taken away from Government agencies because of the suspected involvement of Ministers, and placed under the control of a Parliamentary probe.
The Congress Government of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh lost no time in asking for the resignation of one of India's more modern technocrat-politicians, the Deputy Minister of External Affairs and former UN diplomat Shashi Tharoor, whom many political commentators felt was "too smart by half". This was not the first time he had got into hot water for inappropriate conduct in his brief tenure in Indian politics. He even once drew our ire for denying news reports that Indian forces were placed on alert when the Sri Lankan president had expressed fears to New Delhi's then envoy in Colombo that a coup was in the offing in the immediate aftermath of the defeat of the LTTE; something neither the establishment in Colombo nor New Delhi denied.
It transpired that the ruling Congress Party has its own Code Committee and Tharoor was asked to quit for compromising his integrity. Even though he had pleaded that he had not engaged in improper conduct by 'facilitating' a deal for a lady friend in purchasing a franchise for an IPL team in his constituency, the Code Committee under the Prime Minister felt that a politician of the ruling party must - like Caesar's wife - be not only honest, but above suspicion.
Way back in the days of the State Council in this country, when six members were hauled up before a Bribery Commission, S.W.R.D. Bandaranaike had argued that they should be expelled. One of the accused had interrupted to ask, "even if they are innocent?" and Bandaranaike had replied, "Yes, even if they are innocent", because of the high standards people expected of their elected representatives.
That was public life many decades ago. Alas, such honourable mores are fast fading from even the democratic world. There has been, in a sense, a liberalisation (read devaluation) of the values and standards expected of those in public life. In Britain, Members of Parliament are increasingly corrupt; and many in India say that Tharoor paid the price while so many other dyed-in-the-wool politicians, the "old rogues" know their way around the corruption mill and survive.
But the fact that the Indian Prime Minister was able to crack the whip sent a signal that he would not countenance even a whiff of scandal. He made it known that he did not wish to re-appoint corrupt MPs as Ministers - or at least if coalition politics compelled him to give them appointments, to give them back the same portfolios when the new Government was formed last May. He has set investigators to re-open old inquiries involving even Chief Ministers who were suspected of unleashing ethnic violence.
Also on Friday, the drive against corruption in India netted no less than the head of the Medical Council on charges of bribery. It will be of interest to see if this has anything to do with recent exports of questionable pharmaceuticals and medical equipment to Sri Lanka, something that has been in the news here in recent years.
The moral of all this is that India is trying to clean up its politics. Its Income Tax Department made simultaneous raids on the offices of the IPL franchise holders this week and officials are perusing documents relating to what appears to be a huge exercise in illegal money laundering.
During the recent Presidential and Parliamentary election campaigns, we suggested that our Inland Revenue officials probe the vast reservoir of financial resources that seem to have been made available to persons with otherwise unknown sources of income. That would have opened a can of worms and the Department would not have to persecute honest taxpayers so much knowing where the hidden wealth of Sri Lanka lies.
President Mahinda Rajapaksa in welcoming his new cabinet this week urged his Ministers to be good examples to the younger MPs who have just been elected. As much as they must indeed be role models, there is a terrific onus on the President's own shoulders to see that his new Ministers conduct themselves exemplarily, in every sense of the word. Closing down the Bribery and Corruption Commission was no way to send any positive signals.
Both the new MPs as well as those returned must heed the famous words of Edmund Burke to the voters of Bristol way back in 1774 where he declared that a Member of the House of Commons was not just the delegate of his constituents, but that when elected, he became the representative of the whole nation. Burke told his voters, that "I am no longer a Member of Bristol; I am now a Member of Parliament".
In the early years of parliamentary democracy in Britain, the wages of an MP were paid by the electors, and they would instruct him on what to do in Parliament. This has now changed. MPs are paid from the common public purse and expected to serve the nation as a whole. Making a buck on the side does not figure in the equation.
The lesson from India and the Shashi Tharoor episode is one worth learning for a nation like ours, that is looking to make good under the stewardship of a President who has, with whatever blemishes, won the confidence of the majority. |
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