It will not do for disgraced former Asom Education Minister Ripun Bora to blame others, including some from his own party, for the turn of events that took him to New Delhi to bribe a CBI officer. It will not do for Bora to talk about conspiracies against him — at least not now even if one is to assume for a moment that some of his rivals were hatching a plot against him. This cannot justify what Bora is now known for. The fact is that he is a suspect in the Daniel Topno murder case, that the then young tea tribe leader Topno was a challenge to Bora’s rising political stars, and that last Tuesday Bora did try to bury the case for ever by bribing an officer of the country’s premier investigative agency. The fact is that Bora, by attempting to silence the CBI’s investigating officer with the lure of his lucre, was simply pointing to his own past, beginning September 2000 when Daniel Topno was killed by ‘unidentified men’. The ghost of that past is now back, despite Bora’s best efforts of the time to chase it away.To add to what we said in this column yesterday, a case being investigated by the CBI ought to have acted on Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi’s conscience when he was choosing his cabinet in 2006 to begin his second stint at Dispur. Surely the Gohpur MLA, who carried the taint of being a suspect in a murder case which the CBI had already started to investigate at that point of time, could not have been a ministerial choice for a government promising transparency and a society free of crime and corruption. However, that was what Mr Tarun Gogoi chose to ignore. Even otherwise, what was there to exclusively qualify Ripun Bora to be the Education Minister of the State? That there was someone who showed the promise of being capable of humiliating the likes of former Gauhati University Vice-Chancellor Amarjyoti Choudhury? The crux of the matter is that, thanks to the kind of politics that has plagued the land of the Mahatma, a person against whom the CBI was investigating in a murder case was given the responsibility of looking after the educational affairs of the State. Would the Chief Minister now admit that blunder, even though it is too late to make any course correction? An answer is in order.Having said this, we wonder how many Ripuns could be freely flourishing all about us and how many such souls, who otherwise pose as saviours of the society, are yet to come and would be allowed to wield power and authority. One wonders how long this society will endure such fraud in the name of ‘development’. What is of course clear is that the voters are forced to mandate candidates with criminal background — proven or alleged — because as ordinary citizens they have no option but to be resigned to their fate knowing it pretty well that money and muscle power is all that counts for one to be a lawmaker only to prove himself to be an excellent lawbreaker too. If Chief Minister Tarun Gogoi is reading this, he should sit up and give a thought to the damaging effect of criminalization of politics and politicization of crime in this State of ours on the generations to come. However, if he remains indifferent to the reality, he will prove himself to be yet another leader who has preferred expediency and short-term gains to meaningful politics and governance. This is not any advice, just a suggestion to fall on ears that are not deaf or have gone deaf due to choice.
Not Just the Ripuns
The arrest of Guwahati-based journalist Mukul Pathak for being an associate of Ripun Bora should not come as a surprise. We have long held that not all journalists are saints. The question could be a bit more harsh: How many journalists are really what they pose as? Or, how many of them are not really saleable? What is disturbing is not the fact of a journalist being at the service of a tainted minister for pecuniary gains, but the frequency with which such incidents should come to light. This is something that the journalistic fraternity would do well to introspect on and spruce itself for the people to trust the community and respect the profession of journalism. Indeed, as prices rise and the glamour quotient strikes one and all, many among the journalists too would have temptations to look for avenues to make quick money, quite like those in other professions. But then, the journalists will forfeit their right to speak for the people, their right to report or comment and analyse, their right to expose the evil, their right to preach in newspaper columns and television shows. We must remember that if politicians have journalists on their pay rolls, it is because the journalists have allowed themselves to be sold — paid as they are for not publishing things or for publishing what their real masters want. It is time to identify the Mukuls, not just the Ripuns. Sentinel Assam Editorial
