Tag: justice

Categories
Rule of Law Values

On Memorials

What was cleared last night was not Daphne’s memorial. What was cleared was the reminder that justice is failing, it was the reminder of a rebellion against impunity, a reminder that not all of society is prepared to keep their eyes, ears and mouths shut.

There will eventually be a time and place to discuss an eventual memorial to Daphne but this is not that time.

This is the time to return the candles, the messages and the photos that spell out clearly that the present political system operating in an ever dwindling space of rule of law will just not do.

There are crooks everywhere.

Categories
Library

Aversus a Musis

 

Neque enim quisquam est tam aversus a Musis, qui non mandari versibus aeternum suorum laborum facile praeconium patiatur. Themistoclem illum, summum Athenis virum, dixisse aiunt, cum ex eo quaereretur, quod acroama aut cuius vocem libentissime audiret: “Eius, a quo sua virtus optime praedicaretur.” Itaque ille Marius item eximie L. Plotium dilexit, cuius ingenio putabat ea quae gesserat posse celebrari. (Cicero, Pro Archia 20)

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(Translation)

“There is no one so averse to the Muses that he would not readily submit to having an eternal monument of his own labors made in verse. They say that Themistocles, the chief man in Athens, when he was asked what entertainment or whose voice he would most gladly listen to, responded that [he would most gladly hear] the voice of the one by whom his own glory was best celebrated. And so, in the same way, Marius esteemed Lucius Plotius, by whose talent he thought that those things which he had accomplished could be best celebrated.” (Cicero, Pro Archia 20)

Categories
Articles Rule of Law

Seeing justice done

This article appeared in today’s Sunday Times of Malta. 

In her Republic Day address, President Coleiro Preca stated that she believes “that the rule of law is as strong as the people acknowledge it to be, as much as they believe in it, cherish it, and continue to support it.” In her reference to the concept of “belief”, the President might have unintentionally struck an important chord that plays through the ongoing debate where the “rule of law” is concerned.

Seeing, in this period of Post-Truth Politics, is believing – even when what we see is a staged performance that is intended to reassure the emotional side of our thinking brains while at the same time numbing any rational reaction thereto. The phenomenon has been pigeonholed using various metaphors: the emperor’s clothes and Magritte’s pipe (ceci n’est pas une pipe) come to mind right now. Whole generations (particularly the baby-boomers) prize emotional sincerity over “the starchy pursuit of objective truth”.

Truth has been relegated to a relative importance in the list of priorities. It has to compete with the panoply of emotional expressions that have moved up on the popular agenda. The lack of forensic analysis, when people stop questioning the facts, has also meant that society has less time for ‘experts’. There is no trust in them. The Brexit and Trump phenomena followed on the heels of the financial crisis of 2008 when trust ratings in experts plummeted.

The collapse of trust is dangerous. As Matthew d’Ancona (who I rely upon quite liberally in this article) states “… all successful societies rely upon a relatively high degree of honesty to preserve order, uphold the law, hold the powerful to account and generate prosperity”.

Without the real value of truth our gauge of what the people appreciate shifts dramatically. Law, the rule of law, is not about faith. The very concept of a working system under the rule of law is not designed to work depending on the number of believers in the system. There is a word for a system based on belief: Religion. The rule of law is not about faith. Nor is it about hope – hope that justice is done. The danger of misinterpreting the phrase “seeing that justice is done” is based on the simple fact that it is part of a larger whole.

Fearne brought up ‘the rule of law’ often and it was like the devil quoting scriptures

The full phrase in fact is, “Not only must justice be done, it must be seen to be done”. Remove the first part – actually and linguistically – and you get an act of prestidigitation, where you are made to believe that something is there when it is not. Such a magic act requires a theatrical appeal to emotional intelligence of the highest kind: it not only requires that you believe but also that you suspend that belief and actually believe what you are being told that you should see.

“Seeing justice done” should in fact be the final act of a progression of events that include justice actually being meted out. In the past weeks we have seen the concept of the rule of law twisted and turned beyond recognition. The danger is that people begin to believe that what they see in action is the rule of law when actually it is the rule by law. In his Commentary on the Constitution Tonio Borg sets out the distinction clearly: “So the rule of law is a concept which gauges not just the number of laws enacted but their nature and direction. It is also a political concept so that something, which is clearly within the parameters of the law, may still go against the rule of law in spirit.”

Watching Chris Fearne squirm to Tim Sebastian’s questioning on the Conflict Zone (DeutscheWelle) was not pleasant. Fearne brought up “the rule of law” often and it was like the devil quoting scriptures. The Prime Minister appealing in court in order to stop inquiries, redacted contracts because commercial interests trump public interest, quoting laws in order to prevent sharing of information regarding passport buyers… that is just an aperitif.

We have naively called the new religion out as spin. It is not just spin. It is a dangerous belief system that is supplanting what should be a concrete system based on law and inspired by natural justice. Bringing three men before the courts of law for the heinious murder of a journalist can never be seen as the final curtain call that proves that all is well in the state of the Republic.

Believe me, it is not.

Jacques Zammit is a référendaire at the Court of Justice of the European Union and one of the founders of the Advocates for the Rule of Law. Opinions expressed in this article are strictly personal.

Categories
Citizenship Drugs

Playing that Criminal Record

criminal_akkuzaThere’s an item in the news about the Earth Garden concert. The article title is “DJs ‘humiliated’ by police at Earth Garden Festival“. This is one of those instances where you have to wonder what the quote marks around the word humiliated are intended to convey. Is it sarcasm? Irony? Is the journalist taking the piss out of the DJs and saying that they are making a mountain out of a molehill?

I’ll leave you to guess about the employment of quote marks by the Times journalist on this occasion. What is more interesting, and worrying, is the existence of a policy that is being applied by the police in these circumstances with regard to the line up of DJs. So, from what I gather, when you apply for a permit to have a concert such as Earth Garden (in this day and age when people are paid commissions by government to look for garages for performing artists to practice in – coz we iz cool and with it) your line up of DJs gets vetted for any “priors”. If what the organisers said is true then apparently even a minor crime (I’m assuming possession) that dates over 20 years is sufficient for the long arm of the law to strike you off the list. I am also assuming that no such vetting occurs for the other people emplpyed for this concert – the barmen might have just finished their latest stint in Kordin, the cleaners might be on parole and there is (I am still assuming) no quick check up at the door to ensure that all concert goers have a clean bill on their social conscience.

If at face value (yeah Prima Facie) this is not already a ridiculous state of affairs in your mind then just put it all in context. This kind of attitude is a clear demonstration of our society’s lax and arbitrary attitude towards any sense of justice and equity. Policies such as this might (and I stress the might) have a place within a comprehensive program of – let me see – drug dissuasion. But is there one? What is the national policy on Dj’s and their role in concerts? Is there one? Has a spin doctor within the Taghna Lkoll government noticed the potential niche market and come up with some new groundbreaking “social legislation” to add to The One We Allowed the Puffs to Marry, The One We Made Being Gay Legal and The One We Introduced Social Security. (Warning, Irony and sarcasm might damage your brain)?

Not yet it seems. So the branch of the law that most randomly interprets policy and the rule of law decides to suddenly make even the most minor of infractions hidden back in time a huge handicap for DJs. yep. Just DJs. All this while the Prime Minister of the Republic openly embraced a convicted criminal and proudly declared him a soldier of steel. Mixed messages? Who cares? We work in niches and pigeon holes. Even far from the political rhetoric there is something very worrying about the haphazard way that we go about creating, applying and interpreting our laws and policies. The man in the street cannot be blamed for having a skewered view of the law and all that pertains to it.

Cause the police always got somethin stupid to say
They put out my picture with silence
Cause my identity by itself causes violence – N.W.A. (includes O’Shea Jackson a.k.a Ice Cube, Andre Romelle Young a.k.a Dr Dre)

This is the country that hosts the Isle of MTV and will (rightly) close an eye for performers such as Snoop Dogg yet small-time DJs will be struck off the list. A video about FIFA and its corruption is making the rounds – it mentions how in Brasil alcohol consumption was illegal in stadia until FIFA obliged Brasil to make it legal to accomodate main sponsor Budweiser. It is this kind of inconsistency that makes a mockery of any social and legal system. Policies are meant to be created and used with real social purposes. The law should not simply be a toy for bullying selectively and making a mockery out of citizen rights.

The law – the rule of law – is essential to the fabric of society. It can erode slowly and gradually but the ultimate implosion will not benefit anybody. Justice and equity deserve more careful and less partisan application. I will never tire of repeating the old latin adage. We are servants of the law so that we may be free.

“Police on the scene, you know what I mean, they passed me up, confronted all the dope fiends”- Robert Matthew (a.k.a Vanilla Ice, criminal record includes possession of firearms, domestic violence, expired pet tags, driving with expired licence)

Categories
Constitutional Development Values

The Justice Dispensers

justice_akkuza

The Supreme Court building in New York sports a quote spread along its facade. Attributed to George Washington it states “The true administration of justice is the firmest pillar of good government”. There are many other quips in similar vein that can be formed into a digest of civic education necessary to form a Havel-inspired backbone of society. “We are servants of the law so we may be free”, “everybody is equal in the eyes of the law” and “justice must not only be done but also seen to be done” are but a tiny sampler of a hypothetical dispenser of sayings related to the role of justice in forming a strong backbone of society.

The onset of relativism in Malta, poisoned as it was with strong doses of populism and twisting of truths in order to benefit whatever half of the population was being courted, has had a devastating effect on our concept of administration of justice and its dispensation. The institutional (constitutional) set up intended to be a fine machinery with which laws would be discussed, promulgated and implemented has been the main victim of the spread of the malaise of relativism and once the mother of all populist and relativist movements plonked itself in the seat of “power” the inevitable happened.

It began slowly. The “fairness” of justice was (rightly) made a subject of debate. Nothing wrong there, especially since society has a way of revising its concept of justice and mores on a regular basis. The problem begins when the proper channels for the revision of laws and finally the dispensation of justice are bypassed in the name of some relativist concept of fairness that operates plainly outside the codebook. There is no legal certainty, no legitimate expectation – simply an unpredictable machine churning out populist edicts as becomes the popular call of the moment. The erosion happens quick and fast by eradicating any concept of merit, of just deserts and introducing a volatile idea of “fairness” (at least perceived).

This is a society that will now reward failures (repeaters at University will still receive their stipend). This is a government that, without any legal foundation, decides to create a blanket amnesty to 1,500 persons who are blatantly accomplices in the crime of theft of public property. The example this sets is an abomination to any aspirations of a just society. The transparent reasoning behind it all – notwithstanding all the faffle from the respective Ministers and PM – is that most of these people would form part of the disgruntled who complained about the price of electricity. Those disgruntled had thrown their weight behind the current government – no wonder they suddenly find a reprieve whisked out of thin air.

Under this government though we have been told that if you consider a tax or a cost to be unfair then you are perfectly within your rights to try and avoid paying it. Committing a crime to do so is perfectly kosher – this is thegovernment that supposedly rewards Robin Hoods. There is no sense in all this other than the distortion of justice for political mileage.

“We cannot expect people to have respect for law and order until we teach respect to those we have entrusted to enforce those laws.” – Hunter S. Thompson.

Categories
Mediawatch

When justice opens her eyes

There’s a reason why justice is supposed to blind. Lady justice is always portrayed with the scales of balance in one hand, the sword in another and a bandage covering her eyes – the latter a strong symbol of her “blindness”. The reason for this blindness is the fact that before justice everyone is equal – there should be no distinction and no discrimination. There are not two sets of laws that apply to different categories of people.

Today’s judgement by Magistrate Peralta as reported in the papers might mistakenly lead people to begin to believe that justice has opened its eyes. It would be a wrong kind of opening of the eyes because it is the kind that seems to imply that there is a law for one kind of persons (the locals) and another for another kind (foreigners). The phrase “foreigners engaging in crimes will be dealt with seriously” is dangerously equivocal and has hopefully been misinterpreted by the reporting press.

One would hope that whoever engages in crimes is dealt with seriously… no matter what the nationality on their passport. There is a second danger that is inherent in this statement and this is the fact that it encourages the kind of “us and them” talk that until now had been exclusively the domain of our government as it pandered to the populist ideas about the dangers of having too many foreigners among us.

So let’s hope this unhappy statement is clarified and rectified. And remember – on paper at least, “la legge è uguale per tutti”.