T N Ninan: There is still time

WEEKEND RUMINATIONS

The Congress and the United Progressive Alliance are making a huge mistake. Caught off-guard by the revelations about Pratibha Patil's past, both are behaving like the rabbit caught in the merciless glare of headlights: frozen and unable to move. This is exactly the wrong attitude to adopt, for two reasons. First, if enough members of the electoral college decide that Ms Patil is not the right person to be President, and indulge in cross-voting so that the Vice-President, Mr Shekhawat, emerges the winner, it will be a massive blow to the ruling alliance. Second, it will be even worse if Ms Patil wins, because the whole country now knows that she is not a suitable candidate for being made head of state. For five long years, she will be a national embarrassment in a way that no President so far has been. And if the courts move against her close relatives in ongoing cases, her position will become untenable.

The original mistake, it would seem, is that Ms Patil's name got proposed and accepted as the UPA's candidate as a last-minute compromise, after over a dozen other names had been tossed up and rejected. In the haste, no background checks got done with the help of the police or intelligence service; as for the politicians from her home state knowing of her record, bad loans and mismanagement of cooperative banks would seem to be so much the order of the day in some states that no one noticed her record on these issues, or cared much if they had noticed. This kind of slip is understandable when last-minute decisions are arrived at, and there is no shortage of precedents in other countries when candidates withdrew from the fray in the wake of embarrassing revelations about their past. If Ms Patil, who has gone in two short weeks from anonymity to becoming everyone's favourite grandmother and now to a politician with a past, is reluctant to withdraw, she should be pushed into doing so.

Though it has lost time, it is still not too late for the UPA to call an emergency meeting and, with Ms Patil out of the way, decide on a new candidate. The last date for nominations is today, and some quick action should be possible before the deadline passes. Doing this will mean eating humble pie, but that is better than presenting the country with a five-year embarrassment; even the generally intransigent Left will presumably be willing to go in for a compromise candidate.

What would be least desirable is any attempt to defend Ms Patil's record. From the revelations that have tumbled out of her cupboard, it is clear that she misused and mismanaged a cooperative bank that she founded, named after herself and led both formally and informally, mostly to benefit her close relatives. After warnings on the bank's performance, the Reserve Bank was forced to take the extreme step of canceling its licence. The bank had to be liquidated as a consequence, and depositors must have lost a lot of money. It is hard to argue that Ms Patil is not to blame or that she did not know, and the Prime Minister's explanation about the ups and downs of the sugar industry being responsible for the bad loans is laughable.

Then there are the allegations, as yet unproven, of Ms Patil's relatives being linked to a murder and a suicide. On top of which there is the record of Ms Patil having spoken during the Emergency in favour of compulsory sterilization of selected categories of people. Finally, there are her more recent comments on the woman's veil, Mughal rule, and communing with spirits""all of which presage other embarrassing comments that will come if she is President. The question the UPA must ask itself is whether, if it had known all this earlier in the month, Ms Patil would have been chosen as its presidential candidate. If not, the logical action that must now follow is also clear.