A Guy’s View: Rule of law or rule of men?

 

Evan Williams, the co-founder and former Chief Executive Officer of Twitter was fired from his own company. A few years before that, Ted Turner, the creator of Cable News Network (CNN), was fired from his own company. What should we take from these events?

 

These men had foresight and creative ability, but the entities they created became bigger than them. As far as company size goes, they created monsters with world-wide reach and impact and they could no longer control them. The very people they employed fired them. 

 

That a person could create an entity that could outgrow him may be seen as a capitalist success. It could be argued that were the incapable managers kept in place, their companies would never have reached their full potential. For the maximisation of the potential of anything, it is desirable to have the rule of ideas, skill and established procedures, rather than the rule of a person.

 

We claim that we are a country of laws and are governed by the rule of law. This sounds good, for it is the proper way in which modern countries are governed, at least in the western world. It is important that a well-run country is characterised by a high degree of adherence to established principles of governance. 

 

In some other systems, states are governed by strong men. In such states, it matters not what the written law says. The only thing which matters is the will of the leader. The world has seen how these dictators operate. We have the example of Augusto Pinochet in Chile. During his control, over 3000 people were either killed or disappeared. Over 30 000 Chileans were tortured and over 80 000 forcibly interned. At the time of his death investigations had established that he had amassed at least US$28 million corruptly and was facing about 300 criminal charges. 

 

The President elect of The Philippines, Rodrigo Duterte, recently announced that when he was the Mayor of a city, he killed drug dealers and other criminals. He sent out a general warning that as President, he will follow that same course. As far as I know, the laws of The Philippines do not provide for extra-judicial killings. Clearly, he has usurped the rule of law in his country. Several other examples could be cited. 

 

But not so in Barbados. We have regular fair elections. We have hundreds of laws on our statute books, both primary and secondary legislation. These govern almost every aspect of our lives. Good governance demands that after all of that effort and expenditure of time by our drafters, we do not choose to apply our laws, not as they provide, but as some persons in positions of authority choose. Public authority dictatorship run counter to the safe path of the rule of law. 

 

The importance of good governance is reason why our governmental system is grounded on the principle of separation of the powers the Executive, the Legislature and the Judiciary. It is alien to our system for one person to be accuser, judge, jury and executioner. 

 

For example, just imagine a police officer having the authority to accuse a person of a wrong, try that person and convict her, and then impose her sentence. Or a person in some other position of authority laying charges against a person, sitting in judgement of that person and imposing a sentence on that person. 

 

Or, for instance, imagine a country having laws which provide that people who dump waste unlawfully should be prosecuted, but the authorities that are responsible for the enforcement of this legislation decide to ignore the provisions of the law when it suits them to do so and refuse to prosecute offenders at their own whim. Offenders are threatened with prosecution only if they do not do what these persons in authority tell them to do.

 

In such a scenario, the authorities are acting outside of their legal authority and instead of one, there are now two law breakers. Their de facto power supersedes the law of the land and what we have is the exercise of power without authority. 

 

Is this practice likely to encourage illegal dumping since dumpers now know that if they are caught, they will face no legal penalty? The worse that could happen to them is to spend a few minutes cleaning up their mess. But what else could it encourage?

 

Under the professed rubric of the rule of law, a well-orchestrated programme has been launched to create the impression of disquiet and societal flux. Fortunately, it is obvious to any who would look that this is not a natural development, but a carefully planned artificial life form. 

 

Societal confusion, at this time, is largely driven by partisan politics. It is an unfortunate but common ploy that if one cannot wrest power in a cordial environment, then it is worth resorting to efforts to undermine confidence in the system of governance and create an image of strife and mayhem, forgetting that what goes around, comes around. This is fair game in an adversarial political system like ours. The onus is on the people to be discerning enough to differentiate between incompetence in government and artificially created crises. In our system, people come to power by persuasion. All vying entities are entitled to pitch their story and let the people decide what they choose to believe. This makes an educated population essential to our well-being.

 

The Barbados we live in has been created by our hands. So too is the Barbados in which we will live after the troubling actions we are now taking have taken effect. Responsible, positive actions will also contribute to a future Barbados. Put succinctly, we create our own world. 

 

Our laws are shaped in open and booked for all to see and read. Every Barbadian, or Martian, should be able to look at our laws and know what is expected of us and what to expect from us. The rule of law should not just be something to which we pay lip service, but a principle by which we live. 

Barbados Advocate

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