pioneer edit: Deceitful deed: PM has betrayed the nation's trust

jul 10th, 2008

enquiring minds want to know the identity of the american 'mole' that jaswant singh talked about.

but then, manmohan singh, being an obedient man by inclination, wouldn't have pulled this off by himself. the direction had to come from sonia nehru (or, to be precise, vincent george and the vatican).

---------- Forwarded message ----------
From: Kanchan

Leading editorial comment/ The Pioneer/ July 11, 2008

Deceitful deed
PM has betrayed the nation's trust

The sense of outrage following the UPA Government's deceitful action of circulating the text of the safeguards agreement among the members of the Board of Governors of the International Atomic Energy Agency without seeking and securing a trust vote in Parliament is not limited to the Opposition alone. The entire nation is stunned that the regime of the day should have resorted to such trickery to push through the contentious India-US civilian nuclear cooperation agreement. If the Prime Minister has behaved in a sly manner that does not do justice to the high office he holds, the Government is equally guilty of misleading the people and thus betraying the nation's trust. What is particularly appalling is that although the text was initialled by Indian officials many days — if not weeks — ago, the Prime Minister and his aides purposefully kept the country in the dark. That the text should have been circulated among the IAEA's Governors shortly after the Prime Minister's meeting with US President George W Bush on the sidelines of the G8 summit in Japan adds a sinister twist to the entire episode: It would be perfectly in order to ask whether this Government's decisions and actions are prompted by instructions from elsewhere. Let us not forget that after the Left withdrew its support to the UPA Government, External Affairs Minister Pranab Mukherjee had categorically declared that the Government would approach the IAEA only after seeking a trust vote. To remove any doubts about the Government's intentions, he insisted that this assurance was being given after consulting the Prime Minister who was then abroad. The Prime Minister made a similar commitment by promising to follow parliamentary norms and mocking at the Leader of the Opposition LK Advani for demanding that Parliament be immediately summoned for the Government to prove its majority. "I do not need Mr Advani's advice," the Prime Minister had snidely added. At the end of the day, he stands exposed as someone whose sense of ethics is extremely elastic. Such a man is not deserving of the nation's trust; he has surreptitiously forced on the people a nuclear deal that compromises India's strategic interests and belittles its sovereignty.
Through word and deed the Prime Minister has demonstrated that he is not only desperate to operationalise the nuclear deal before he demits office but also to do bring it in through the backdoor. The Opposition is right in asking: What is the Government trying to hide? And, is there a conspiracy afoot? The Prime Minister is welcome to offer explanations or retreat into high dudgeon, pretending hurt and offence at such suggestions which neither flatter him nor pander to his exaggerated sense of probity. But he will fail to convince the people. He has thrown propriety to the winds and shown that he is no 'accidental' politician but a cynical manipulator who can go to any extent to have his way — not on issues of crucial importance to the nation at this point of time but an agreement that increasingly looks like a private treaty with interests that remain grey and opaque. India cannot, must not, accept its long-term and strategic interests to be compromised by a feckless though craftily cunning Prime Minister who heads a Government which has lost its majority and who will be reduced to no more than a footnote of history after the next general election.