No one expects a spokesman to be an oracle. Purveyors of the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth do not get the job. The idea of having a spokesman is to get your version of events out and to keep any skeletons you might have firmly padlocked in the cupboard. Hedging, dodging and weaving are all part of the game of politics.


But to succeed at that game you have to retain at least a measure of plausibility. Politicians are not meant to tell direct lies. Under a democratic system government is accountable and politicians are expected to answer for their actions. The public, as they say, has a right to know.


It is also in the politicians' interests that people believe them. Not just to make them feel more comfortable or popular, but also to curb the excesses of rumormongering in the corridors of power.


This week, a local radio station carried a report that Prime Minister Viktor Chernomyrdin, whose prolonged vacation on the Black Sea during a major political and economic crisis has already excited considerable speculation, had resigned.


Such reports, sometimes premature and sometimes just irresponsible, are bound to come out from time to time. In most cases, a straight denial is all it takes to refute them. And on Tuesday night, Chernomyrdin's spokesman, Valentin Sergeyev, duly issued the requisite flat denial.


Unfortunately, this is a country where most people assume that most politicians tell lies most of the time. Even after Chernomyrdin had personally assured U.S. Vice-President Al Gore that he had no intention of resigning, the doubts remained.


By Wednesday, Boris Yeltsin had to step into the fray, announcing that he had no plans to sack Chernomyrdin, or for that matter Foreign Minister Andrei Kozyrev, whose tenure had not until then seemed in doubt. In the end, Chernomyrdin flew back to Moscow from Sochi and gave a press conference to assure the world that all was well.


It was an undignified spectacle and one that could have been avoided by a simple exercise in damage limitation. A plausible explanation as to why the Prime Minister has spent the last two weeks sunning himself in Sochi, while the ruble plummeted, the Finance Minister was fired, the chairman of the Central Bank resigned and a muscle-flexing Duma announced it was holding a vote of no confidence in the government, would have helped to avert the Prime Minister's embarrassment.


But to insist, as Chernomyrdin's people are still doing, that for the head of the government to take a break under such circumstances is ***normalno***, is patently absurd, and does nothing to enhance the government's credibility.