The Price of a Lie

It sometimes seems that elected officials can get away with a good deal of wrongdoing, as long as they honestly own up to their sins when they are caught. Let a politician be trapped in a bold-faced lie, however, and he may well be finished. Britain's War Minister John Profumo learned that lesson eight years ago when he falsely assured Parliament that he had never consorted with a tart named Christine Keeler.

Last week another and more prosaic lie proved the undoing of Norway's chunky, affable and usually adroit Prime Minister Per Borten, 57.

Aboard a Scandinavian Airlines flight from Oslo to Copenhagen last month. Borten handed a document marked for-trolig (confidential) to another passenger, saying: "This is interesting. Read it." The document was a report indicating that the European Economic Community would probably balk at the special terms Norway demands as a condition of its entry into the Common Market. The other passenger was Norway's leading Common Market opponent, Arne Haugestad, head of a pressure group called the People's Resistance Movement Against Membership in the EEC. "For your private information," Borten cautioned as he gave the paper to Haugestad.

Within four days, the gist of the report was in the papers, and rumors soon followed that the Prime Minister himself was responsible for the leak. Borten, who had successfully headed Norway's four-party nonsocialist governing coalition since 1965, after 30 years of Labor Party rule, vigorously denied the story. But newsmen knew that he and Haugestad had met on the plane, and the rumors persisted. Finally, in a midnight declaration, Borten admitted that he had shown the report to Haugestad. "I have been guilty of an indiscretion," he confessed. Last week, after a series of emergency Cabinet meetings, Borten handed his resignation to King Olav V. Kjell Bondevik, 70. Church and Education Minister in Borten's Cabinet, agreed to try to form a new government.

The incident brought to a head the issue of whether Norwegians want to join the Common Market at all. All parties officially favor negotiations over membership, and Norway really has no choice if Britain, its best customer outside the EEC, joins. But some groups are opposed. Fishermen vociferously oppose the Common Market rule of sharing inshore fishing grounds. Norway's heavily subsidized farmers', the core of Borten's Center Party constituency, fear that their income would drop as much as 40% or 50% if they had to compete with French and German producers. Borten himself would prefer to see Norway aligned with Sweden, Denmark and Finland in the abortive but still discussed Nordek economic grouping. In any case, Borten's abrupt departure may only be a foretaste of political battles to come among Common Market outsiders who must decide whether the benefits of membership are worth the initiation fee.

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