Posted on 12/30/2001 7:22:13 PM PST by Justin Raimondo
Christians Call for India's Prime Minister and Government to Resign in Wake of Scandal
Web site releases tapes of party president taking bribes from men posing as arms dealers.
By Anto Akkara in New Delhi | posted 3/22/01
A leading Protestant bishop has endorsed widespread calls for the resignation of India's ruling federal coalition following revelations on a Web site last week of government corruption.
"The present government should resign immediately," says Bishop Z. James Terom, moderator of one of India's leading denominations, the Church of North India (CNI).
Referring to the corruption scandal that has rocked the nation, the CNI bishop, of Chota Nagpur, said in a telephone interview from his office in Ranchi, in eastern India, that the revelations were "very unfortunate."
On March 13, Tehelka.com, A New Delhi-based Internet news service, released videotapes proving corruption in the Indian military and at a senior level in the government.
The four-hour video showed senior defense officials discussing personal payoffs as they finalized defense purchases. The residence of George Fernandes, federal defense minister, was made available, according to the video, for meetings with supposed arms dealers who were willing to pay bribes.
Bangaru Laxman, president of the BJP (Bharatiya Janata Party)—the Hindu party which heads the federal coalition—is shown on one video storing banknotes which had been given to him by reporters posing as arms dealers. To make matters worse, the BJP president states a preference for U.S. dollars rather than rupees for his payment.
The tapes were recorded on hidden cameras by a Tehelka news team posing as agents of "West End International"—a fictitious company. The video also raises questions about a relative of Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee and senior officials in the prime minister's office.
Laxman resigned within hours of the video being telecast by Indian news channels. George Fernandes stepped down March 15 reportedly under pressure from various quarters, including smaller parties in the coalition.
Opposition parties are demanding the resignation of the prime minister and the government. Parliamentary proceedings have been stalled over the scandal since the tapes became public. However, the ruling coalition has simply promised to set up a commission of inquiry headed by a Supreme Court judge.
Bishop Terom told ENI: "It is almost a week since the drama started. But nothing has happened." The proposed inquiry was, he said, "an eyewash" and a ploy by the government "to buy time."
Describing the controversy as a "black spot in Indian history," the CNI moderator said that "by the time the commission [of inquiry] is appointed, all the evidence [of corruption] will be destroyed or doctored. Under the same government, nothing will come out." Archbishop Oswald Gracias, secretary general of the Catholic Bishops' Conference of India, told ENI that while the exposure of corruption had "shocked everybody, the government is being very defensive."
The archbishop added that although the church would not publicly call on the government to resign, it did not "approve" of a proposal by Prime Minister Vajpayee that it was up to Parliament to decide what should be done.
"A vote [in Parliament] is not the answer to the problem. The question is one of morality," Archbishop Gracias told ENI from his diocesan office in Agra, 100 miles south of New Delhi. The government's reaction showed it was acting as the "government of the [coalition] parties" trying to save its reputation rather than as the "government of the country or of the people."
(A nation-wide opinion poll by the Asian Age daily newspaper after Tehelka released its video showed that 60 percent of the public wanted the government to go.)
T. Thomas, general secretary of the National Council of YMCAs of India, told ENI that the Vajpayee government might have the "legal right" to continue in office, "but on exemplary moral grounds, the government should resign."
Ambrose Pinto, executive director of the Jesuit-run Indian Social Institute, in New Delhi, told ENI: "We cannot let the government indulge in corruption and [then] whitewash it, using all the machinery at its disposal."
This should you up about all the "persecuted Christians" you've been digging up, Raimohammad! They seem to have the voice to call for the Prime Minister's resignation.
I'm not a pro-Pakistani like you though. All Arab regimes are the same though in their basic anti-western existence. There is no such thing as an arab country that will support us, and we can only trust democracies. Elements of the Pakistani government might not care about consequences and could've launched the terrorist attack. Frankly I think Musharaff is losing desperately holding on to control over there.
Go check out Drudge, by the way. His headline is not reassuring: "India, Pakistan prepare nukes, troops for war"! I hope the radioactive cloud passes right over the houses of all those pro-Indian propagandists who have been posting so much nonsense about India's "war on terrorism." These guys are terrorists -- with nukes!
You don't like Indians, Jews, or Americans.
Castro would welcome your loathsome as* in a minute!
You don't like Indians, Jews, or Americans.
Castro would welcome your loathsome as* in a minute!
He's an unelected military dictator who ousted the elected government. While you can debate whether or not he's a better alternative than anything else, I'd find myself hard pressed to call myself "pro-Musharraf".
So you admit the Paki government is despicable enough to pull something like this before 9/11?
If they are that despicable, why wouldn't they be willing to carry out an attack after 9/11? 9/11 didn't make them better people.
Anyway, nobody's accusing Pakistan of supporting that specific attack, but of supporting the group which carried it out, and others like it.
This seems to be a trend. Support the nation with the unelected thug. Oppose the nation with the representative government. Lessee -- U.S. vs. Taliban/Al Qaeda -- U.S bad. U.S vs. Iraq -- U.S. bad. U.S. vs. Serbia -- U.S. bad(not that you were wrong there, but even a blind hog finds an acorn now and then). India vs. Pakistan -- India bad. Did I miss any?
I guess to a libertarian, if you cannot have a libertarian government, a man on a white horse is better than a republican form of government. Strange. Very strange.
Amnesty International thinks Texans are bloodthirsty because we support executing cop-killers.
You don't like Indians because they, like Israel, elect their leaders.
That also explains your antipathy to America.
You DO seem to like the dictators.
But at best it has allowed the terrorists who carried the attack out to operate uninhibited, and at worst, it finances them through the ISI.
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