Will Watergate be repeated in 'Kellygate'?

But the opposition leader Duncan Smith has warned that this is a departure of the servant and so long the master (Blair) remains deceit will continue to haunt the peace-loving and just mea all around.

Campbell was despised as a "spin doctor" manipulating to uphold the image of Blair and to lead from behind the Labour government's administration. His contribution was noteworthy to help the party achieve landslide victories in last two consecutive elections.

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Blair is passing through the darkest political crisis. He is heavily charged with embellishing the September 2002 dossier on Iraq to sell the inevitability of the war to the Britons.

What probably led Blair to serve Bush as a lackey was a twin profit agenda. Firstly, it would fetch fleshy economic aid from the US to the cash-starved Britain. Secondly, Tony could ride the Iraq war to coast third straight victory of the Labour party in national polls.

It was Blair's costly ineptitude to miscalculate that once Iraq was overrun Britons would be disposed to forget all talks about fabrications on Iraq dossier. In fact the contrary is happening. The people of England wondered to notice what monstrous lies Blair preached by articulating that Iraq was capable of launching chemical and biological weapons within 45 minutes. Incidentally till now the allegation has proved false.

The alleged suicide of weapons expert David Kelly, hailed as a very gentle and capable man, has put the Labour government to an acid test. It is alleged that the administration mentally tortured him in the name of interrogation under a suspicion that he served as a source of an explosive information to the BBC. That hapless scientist was alleged to have subsequently committed suicide.

A judicial enquiry headed by Lord Brian Hutton summoned Blair to testify. Amid unprecedently security with scores of police officers positioned outside the court rooms, a helicopter circling overhead and trained dogs engaged in detecting explosives Blair was grilled over maligning dossier on Iraq's possessing weapons of mass destruction and over his role in disgracing Kelly on suspicion of his being the anonymous source of information to the BBC that carried on May 29 radio report on the September dossier.

Several hundred men from members of the public as well as from media massed outside the court building with rowdy demonstration against the prime minister and his cohorts. They held up odd posters of Blair, foreign secretary Jack Straw, defence secretary Geoff Hoon scribbled with slogans like "Blair and Bush wanted for war crimes". Blair, a growing popular pun on prime minister's name. "Trust me, I am Tony" was a placard around the neck of a demonstrator. "I came to see him hang himself", said a press officer. Many other similar comments gushed out from the mouths of the jeering demonstrators who lined up there from the nightfall.

Blair, however, put up a bold face in the dock of Hutton's court. Masterly combining in himself the art and guide of an actor and lawyer Blair calmly told the inquiry "If it (dossier fabrication) were true it would have meant that we had behaved in the most disgraceful way, and I would have had to resign as prime minister".

No serving prime minister of Britain except only one earlier appeared before a judicial inquiry set up by his own government. More significant was that in living memory no other prime minister had had his motives questioned on such vital issues of war and peace in the manner as Tony Blair had faced in the last few months.

The print media of Britain had been very critical about Blair's policy of spin. Enough of columns had been run spelling out the hoaxes the Labour government had exercised. The Guardian's reputed columnist Tom Bower commented that the deceit over the dossier would be Blair's Watergate. There was no dearth of analysts subscribing to this view. When there arose across Britain an increasing public demand to institute a judicial inquiry into finding out why the British people were misled to be involved in the Iraq war by telling them blatant lies about Iraq's possing weapons of mass destruction Blair did not concede.

Rather he undertook a lavish tour of Japan to skip through mass resentment. At this critical juncture of time the world was stunned to hear that Dr Kelly had committed suicide. Within hours Blair had to swallow the pill of ordering for setting up Hutton commission. A prediction floated that once there was Watergate scandal and now was looming 'Kellygate' scandal.

Indeed there are some striking comparisons between the two. In 1972 under President Nixon's order the US intelligence agency eavesdropped the activities of the Democrats in their Watergate party office. At that time Nixon's chief aide was Bob Heldaman who poked the President to deny the Watergate charges. Similarly Blair might have refused the charges the Hutton commission was probing into on the counsel of Campbell. Little could Nixon imagine that secret audiotapes on the Democrat's Watergate office would reveal how he was lying. Blair too might have thought that none of his secret messages and e-mails to Bush would ever come to light. But, in practice, just the reverse started occurring. We know how Heldaman had to go from White House paving the way for ignominious exit of US President Nixon. We also know that Campbell stepped down from the Downing Street. Only time knows if the cycle of history will be repeated in case of Blair too.

A R Shamsul Islam is retired Principal of Govt Mohila College, Pabna.