EDITORIAL : THE HINDU, INDIA

Avoiding debate

That the Public Accounts Committee, which is examining the loss to the exchequer in the 2G spectrum allocation scandal, would split along party lines was expected. But the attempts by members of the ruling United Progressive Alliance to discredit and dump the entire draft PAC report have gone beyond tolerable levels of political partisanship — and now threaten parliamentary procedures and established norms. While some of the concerns about “factual discrepancies” in the report merited consideration, nothing could possibly justify the desperate methods adopted by the ruling coalition members at the PAC meeting. After committee chairman Murli Manohar Joshi had ‘adjourned' the meeting, the UPA members elected Congressman Saifuddin Soz to the Chair and organised a ‘vote' to reject the draft wholesale. The UPA just about had numbers, after winning over the Samajwadi Party and the Bahujan Samaj Party, which support the government from outside. The ‘vote' rejecting the report was carried 11 to none, after Dr. Joshi and other opposition Members of Parliament walked out. But the appropriateness of the vote itself is in question, as Dr. Joshi says he adjourned the meeting seeking time to examine the allegations of discrepancies in the report. The proper course would have been to thoroughly debate the draft report, rectify discrepancies and errors, and then decide on submitting it to the Lok Sabha Speaker. Instead, chaos was engineered at the PAC meeting to avoid any discussion on the inconvenient issues raised by the draft report on the acts of commission and omission by the former Communications Minister A. Raja, and on the failure of Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and the Prime Minister's Office to prevent the defrauding of the exchequer through the manipulation of an already-flawed ‘first-come first-served' policy.

Questions about the leak of the draft should not be allowed to divert attention from the work of the PAC, which succeeded in raising key issues in the 2G scam. It is just as well that the document is in the public domain, enabling people to read it and make up their mind on the contentious issues. The UPA, which shamelessly stonewalled demands for a Joint Parliamentary Committee probe by pointing to the PAC's work on the same issue, cannot be allowed to undermine the PAC in the name of an ongoing JPC probe. If the 21-member PAC is unable to agree on the report, Dr. Joshi might feel compelled to submit it directly to the Speaker, who will have the final call on its adoption. The ruling coalition members would be well-advised to discuss all the facts and issues brought up by the draft report, rather than seek to use its thin majority in the PAC to politically shield those involved in, or accountable for, India's biggest corruption scandal.

From kompa to political stage

The former kompa musician Michel Martelly has decisively won the Haitian presidential election in a runoff that was delayed after his supporters took to the streets alleging extensive fraud and intimidation in the December 2010 first round. Mr. Martelly apparently came third, but the Organization of American States (OAS) confirmed the allegations, and the purported front-runner, Jude Célestin of the ruling Unity party, was eliminated from the race. In the runoff, preliminary results show that Mr. Martelly has taken close to 68 per cent of the vote to trounce his rival Mirlande Manigat, a law professor. Distancing himself from his provocative stage persona, the new President has started off with a restrained statement of the tasks facing his country, one of the poorest in the world. He has called for political parties to work in harmony. He can expect strong support from the poor, who voted overwhelmingly for him. Haiti's problems are enormous. Nearly 700,000 people displaced by the colossal earthquake in January 2009 still live in camps; large amounts of rubble are yet to be cleared; and people living in rural areas are at risk of contracting cholera, a powerful strain of which has been brought in by U.N. Stabilisation Mission troops.

President Martelly also faces big political challenges. He may have to work with a Unity Prime Minister, as that party is likely to win both the 99-seat Chamber of Deputies and the 30-seat Senate. Even the composition of parliament is uncertain following a disputed Provisional Electoral Council move, which gave 17 seats to Unity by reversing several results. Secondly, Washington has stopped supporting brutal Caribbean dictators, but finds itself unable to stop intervening in the affairs of the region. U.S. government money for Haitian reconstruction has gone overwhelmingly to U.S. contractors — to the tune of 97.5 per cent of nearly $200 million allocated. In addition, Washington put pressure on Haiti and South Africa, where the ex-President Jean-Bertrande Aristide was in exile, to delay his return until after the election. Mr. Aristide, Haiti's first elected President and the victim of a Washington-aided coup in 2004, is now back in Port-au-Prince. He cannot contest the presidency again, but will probably have considerable influence; that could be a problem for Mr. Martelly, whose landslide win is based on a turnout reduced to 23 per cent by a ban on Mr. Aristide's Fanmi Lavalas party. It is to be hoped that Mr. Martelly can rise to the challenges and give Haitians the stable democracy they badly need.