Bit by bit, Manmohan Singh’s Machiavellian nature is being unmasked.
The latest is a revelation by The Times of India that the controversial note of 25 March 2011 sent by the finance ministry, which said that P Chidambaram as finance minister could have stopped A Raja’s sale of underpriced spectrum by insisting on an auction, was done at the instance of the Prime Minister’s Office (PMO).
The release of that 25 March note by the PMO under the Right to Information Act (RTI) had set off a crisis in the UPA with Pranab Mukherjee being seen as the villain of the piece who was trying to settle scores with his predecessor Chidambaram. The bad blood between the two was suppressed only after Sonia Gandhi returned from her surgery in New York and told them to bury the hatchet.
But nothing can erase the fact that the damage was done by Manmohan Singh’s office – and his actions suggest that he is trying very hard to ensure that both potential claimants to the PM’s job are seen as unsuitable to replace him in case Sonia Gandhi finds he is more a liability than an asset to the party.
But when the s*** hit the fan in September, Mukherjee apparently drafted another note to explain why the 25 March note was prepared in the first place, and who contributed more to it.
Clearly, Manmohan Singh wants his two senior-most ministers (P Chidambaram and Pranab Mukherjee) to be at each others’ throats and mutually suspicious so that in case Sonia Gandhi wants an alternative, neither of them will fit the bill. AFP
Apparently, the original note prepared by the department of economic affairs (DEA) had only 12 paras giving the “Chronology of basic facts related to pricing and allocation of 2G spectrum,” but when the draft went to the PMO it came back with 32 paragraphs – with the some of the additions pointing to Chidambaram’s lapses.
Mukherjee, who got implicated in the attempt to saddle Chidambaram with the onus for the 2G scam, has now put the recordstraight by pointing a finger directly at the PMO in a note dt 26 Sep'.
According to The Times of India, the note says: “DEA was not in favour of sending the (25 March) note, after its finalisation through a formal OM (office memorandum). It was upon the insistence of the JS (joint secretary), PMO, through her phone calls to secretary, DEA, that the communication was sent through a formal OM on 25 March 2011.”
What this clearly suggests is that Manmohan Singh – or his office – is clearly behind the effort to hang the 2G scam around Chidambaram’s neck, even though it was the PM’s inability to rein in the DMK’s ministers that was the root cause for the 2G spectrum scam.
However, this is not the only instance of Manmohan Singh playing games to deflect blame from his own short-comings and sins of omission and commission.
He has been playing games all along but his carefully cultivated image of being this helpless, honest guy caught up in the vortex of corruption has saved him the blushes. His humble looks, weak voice, and soft persona have led us to believe that he is a saint in Race Course Road.
But the mask is beginning to fray at the edges – if not fall off completely. Here are some instances of Manmohan Singh’s dubious games – and why he has never yet been caught out.
• In 1996, Manmohan Singh turned on his mentor and the man who made him famous as the country’s reformer – Narasimha Rao. Soon after the Congress tasted defeat in 1996, Singh tried to distance himself from Rao and his JMM bribery scandal, claiming at a Congress party meeting that the PM “like Caesar’s wife” must be above suspicion. Rao had outlived his utility for Singh, and he was trying to build bridges with Sonia Gandhi now. Singh essentially bit the hand that fed his reputation.
• Manmohan Singh is widely given credit for sticking to his guns and backing the nuclear deal. But we now know that he had no such views from former US Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice autobiography, which said that Singh was not keen on the deal. It wasNatwar Singh who championed the nuke deal. In due course, Natwar Singh ended in the doghouse, and Singh owned the deal.
• However, we should still give Singh credit for finally pushing the deal through even at the cost of risking his government. But this is where Manmohan Singh the politician played his cards beautifully. He did not risk his government just on a whim and a fancy – though that is the public image, that the man stood up for a principle, never mind the consequences. Even before the Left had withdrawn support to the government, he had roped in Mulayam Singh’s Samajwadi Party to support the government and the deal. And that’s how Singh pulled it off. Clearly, this was smart, but it gives the lie to Singh’s image that he plays no politics and is only an honest-to-good economist caught in badland.
• But Manmohan Singh’s true colours emerged best in the 2G scam – which he completely failed to stop. His first folly was when he agreed to let Dayanidhi Maran be the sole arbiter of spectrum. Apparently, Manmohan Singh had agreed to let Maran have his way. Then hechanged his mind and tried to get a group of ministers to decide spectrum policy. But when Maran cornered him on his previous agreement, Singh backed off again. (Read all about it here). So much for a PM standing his ground on matters of principle, or wanting to be above suspicion “like Caesar’s wife.”
• He brought the Caesar’s wife argument again when he tried to avoid a Joint Parliamentary probe in the 2G scam – and offered to meet Murli Manohar Joshi’s Public Accounts Committee and answer questions. Here he upstaged the party which was trying to keep him out – the obvious idea being to project a holier than thou image to the public when he was at the vortex of the 2G scam.
• The most glaring case of loose ethical standards came up with Raja. When Manmohan Singh discovered that Raja had given away licences in January 2008 in a wayward fashion, he knew something wrong had been done. But instead of stopping the loot, he told his principal secretary to keep “the PMO at arm’s length” from the 2G issues. That’s all he cared about: his image, not the reality of the loot he could have stopped. And after it was all, Chidambaran drafted a note on 15 Januarywhich made it look like he wanted Raja’s actions to be forgotten.
Manmohan Singh's humble looks, weak voice, and soft persona have led us to believe that he is a saint in Race Course Road. But the mask is beginning to fray at the edges – if not fall off completely.
• His latest effort to use Pranab Mukherjee to deflect blame for the 2G scam towards Chidambaram is one of a piece with the same strategy of getting someone else to carry the can for his own shenanigans and impotence in the face of Raja’s recalcitrance.
• And just in case you think this is all make-believe, here’s the latest in the PM-Pranab-Chidambaram power politics. According to columnist Virendra Kapoor, even though Pranab Mukherjee has, by seniority, been the one to preside over the cabinet in the PM’s absence, a recent note by the Cabinet secretary says that in his absence, “either the minister of finance or the minister of home affairs may remain in Delhi during the period of the Prime Minister’s absence.”
• To compound things, Kapoor quotes a 22 October note, which says that the “Cabinet Committee of Political Affairs will, in the Prime Minister’s absence, be presided over by the senior-most minister.” Why not name Pranab? Or even Chidambaram? Clearly, Manmohan Singh wants his two senior-most ministers to be at each others’ throats and mutually suspicious so that in case Sonia Gandhi wants an alternative, neither of them will fit the bill
Former Planning Commission member YK Alagh and Digvijaya Singh have been variously credited with this quote on Manmohan Singh – that he is “an over-rated economist and an under-rated politician.”
Quite. He is Machiavelli incarnate.
Reproduced from the pages of FIRSTPOST.
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