ET Edit: Rahul Gandhi fails a test of leadership

When the country’s apex court terms a set of accusations as “fictitious” and “not authentic”, when those accusations have no evidentiary power, since they come from jottings in so-called “diaries” allegedly maintained by corporate groups, should the leader of the national opposition use such material to charge the Prime Minister of corruption? Absolutely not.

But Rahul Gandhi, Congress vice-president, has chosen to do so and opened himself to charges of political immaturity and poor tactical thinking. His party had aggressively dismissed jottings found in so-called diaries of middlemen in the Agusta-Westland deal, jottings that referred to “Fam”, and AP, and BJP leaders were insistent that they referred to an important Congress leader and the Congress’ first family.

Congress was right then to say these jottings, minus substantive proof, do not constitute a case that has to be answered. Rahul Gandhi is wrong now to employ the same tactic his party had questioned.

Indeed, he is more than just wrong, since the leader of national opposition must weigh his words carefully before hurling them at the Prime Minister. There’s a measure of adolescent thinking in Gandhi’s actions so far, exemplified best perhaps by his tweet asking the Prime Minister to explain “what was contained in the 10 packets”, a reference to the word “packet” in the so-called diaries.

The tweet showed Gandhi and his advisers still reckon that repetition of allegations that are not substantive will somehow stick. This is not the way of smart political players, who do their homework before going public with allegations of corruption against opponents. Little wonder, therefore, Gandhi’s allegations on Wednesday and Thursday have failed to create any kind of political storm, and have attracted more critique than praise from neutral quarters.

That the PM on Thursday chose not even to name Rahul Gandhi while ridiculing him may be in one sense part of rhetorical battles, but it also shows how much distance Gandhi has to cover before he emerges as a political leader who can inflict real damage on the ruling party. Politics is a hard game and at the highest level, it calls for preparation and cleverness and a sense of what is responsible/credible and what is not. Rahul Gandhi, at least in this diary episode, has failed to pass all three tests.