With their claims and counterclaims, the BJP and the Congress have turned the Rafale issue into a perception battle.
THE RAFALE ISSUE has been kept on the boil with a string of allegations about the 059,000-crore deal. Over the past few days, the Narendra Modi government has been furiously firefighting to debunk each allegation.
The jury is still out on whether the charges will stick, legally or politically. But what is striking is the ferocity with which Congress president Rahul Gandhi is building up the issue ahead of the Lok Sabha polls.
In politics, it is perception that matters. The Narendra Modi government claims that it is fighting the perception battle. Both sides—the BJP and the Congress—have been trying to outdo each other in hurling corruption allegations. This means the Lok Sabha elections will be bitterly fought, with the Congress building a narrative around its mantra chowkidar chor hai (the guard is a thief), and the BJP painting the Gandhi family as the country’s bane.
The Congress’s strategy is to step up the pressure till Rafale becomes a Bofors moment for the Modi government. The government, in turn, has been trying to strengthen the cases against the Gandhi family. Investigating agencies recently summoned Congress general secretary Priyanka Gandhi’s husband, Robert Vadra, and his mother for questioning. Also, the purported revelations by Christian Michel, the alleged middleman in the scrapped AgustaWestland chopper deal, are likely to be made public as part of the charge-sheet, which may again be used to show the Gandhis in a bad light.
この記事は THE WEEK の February 24, 2019 版に掲載されています。
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