As the old saying goes, he that diggeth the pit shall fall into it. Defence Minister George Fernandes is in deep trouble and there may be only one way to climb out of it. He must say his mea culpas and hope to be forgiven by all those he has outraged or embarrassed. It will have to be a proper heartfelt apology for he has offended many individuals and institutions in the course of making and trying to prove wild charges.Those charges about the printing of surplus ballot papers for Nalanda and Barh constituencies have been investigated and proved false by the Election Commission. So, among those to whom an apology is owed are the governments of West Bengal and Bihar which were wrongly accused of conspiring against Fernandes and fellow Samata Party leader and former Railway Minister Nitish Kumar. The Election Commission was given misleading information and is, at the least, owed a full explanation. As for the director of the Intelligence Bureau, he cannot be extricated from this mess without acuteembarrassment to himself and the defence minister.The whole business is ugly. Cabinet ministers cannot take it upon themselves to investigate alleged election malpractices, use their clout to collect information and feed it to the EC. They must behave like ordinary candidates and take their suspicions to the Election Commission. There is one very important thing Indians agree about at election-time and that is, the conduct of the polls should be left to the EC. People respect the institution of the EC because those who run it abide by rules and norms.Was the EC deliberately given false information about the printing press in Calcutta? Fernandes must answer this. What he, the Samata Party and the BJP, all of whom complained about bogus ballot papers, ought to do is obvious. That does not mean it will be done. Going by past performance, it is likely there will be a huge fudge through selective media briefings. A couple of scapegoats will be found. There will be diversionary tactics. As always theopposition can be accused of doing worse things and in this instance Laloo Prasad Yadav's record is handy.In short, expect the whole bag of tricks. That is how the Samata Party and the BJP have handled past embarrassments. It takes courage of a high order to admit that one has blundered and blundered egregiously. Sadly, such courage is lacking. Sadly, even the wisdom to know when to call a halt to damaging conduct may be lacking. It is not often that the Election Commissioners have been forced to plead with the nation to trust them and to denounce attempts to bring the poll process to a halt. All this was provoked not only by Fernandes' false charges but by the acting governor of Bihar, B. M. Lal's bid to shuffle around bureaucrats.Who is conducting the poll? Lal, Fernandes, the ruling party? The EC should be allowed to get on with its extremely difficult task of completing the largest election in the world. The process complete, it must turn its attention to establishing whether Fernandes, the generalsecretary of the Samata Party, Lallan Singh, or anyone else should be charged with corrupt electoral practices for making inquiries about the printing of ballot papers in a press in Calcutta.
