WHAT – NO EVIL?
Today’s expose on the front page and the op-ed to the
right of you indicate the financial jiggery-pokery that the
Chief Justice of this country was responsible for, in the
handling of her private accounts. The sums involved were to the
tune of millions.
The methods involved were, to say the very least, innovative
to the point of being the stuff of a regular detective thriller.
Here she has millions. There they vanish. This, all, from the
supreme judicial office of the country.
It is a very bad record, all things considered. There have
been reams written since the recent impeachment proceedings
began against the head of the country’s Supreme Court. But
alarmingly, none of the rights activists and the Transparency
International corruption czars have said anything about the
propriety or otherwise of the Chief Justice’s financial
dealings.
As they say - - the silence is so deafening. If they would
have thought that they do not see anything objectionable in the
Chief Justice’s money matters, they would certainly have said
so. But they did not.
They cannot afford to be so flagrantly out of line. No sane
person could suggest that the CJ like Caesar’s wife, is above
suspicion. That would be so utterly ludicrous, for even those
contortionists at Transparency International who have
historically had such a rather transparent set of double
standards.
But what is shocking is the fundamental moral decline in the
country, to the extent that there are people who think the so
called independence of the judiciary is so important that they
wager the integrity of the judiciary can be all but forgotten!
Taken at a more fundamental, even, it is hard to imagine that
the paragons of virtue and good governance and integrity find it
so is difficult to acknowledge that it is impossible, to ignore
real lapses in integrity - - real financial wrongdoing and
malpractice – by simplifying the equation and saying that it is
all on behalf of a good cause, which is the independence of the
judiciary.
This is a bit similar to, say, a contention that pedophilia
is somehow passable as long as it is practiced for the more
noble purpose of the prevention of murder.
By any yardstick the so called judicial independence issues
involved here are minuscule, even on the unlikely assumption
that they exist at all? Really, is the independence of the
judiciary threatened by the movers of the impeachment motion?
Are there any personal cases that the Supreme Court has
authority over that involve the 117 signatories to the
impeachment motion? Or are there any abuse of power issues
involving these 117 parliamentarians personally?
The answer is in the emphatic negative. This means that there
is no real ulterior or personally dictated motive that the
Legislature harbours, to impeach the Chief Justice.
If there is no finger pointing at the movers of the
impeachment motion, there is no crime, and there is no smoking
gun either. Whereas, as far as the integrity issues involving
the CJ are concerned, the ‘crime’ and the smoking gun are very
real.
The accounts that have been emptied and replenished and the
dates involved point to a real intent to conceal and therefore
mislead. If concealing millions is the ‘crime’ the smoking gun
is that these millions were carefully manipulated, so as to
evade the regulators -- with a trail of banking records leaving
incontrovertible evidence.
But yet, the civil society corruption watchers, whistle
blowers and lily white moralists etc., are largely silent. Is it
because they feel that there is certain types of corruption
carried out by certain types of people that is excusable?
The only things these generally shrill activists seem to be
saying is that there is corruption in society, and therefore the
CJ’s is not something special. This is no malpractice however
that has been invented for general mischief by some scurrilous
website. This is obvious, glaring, and on the record misdoing
from the Chief Justice of the country.
What’s worse than her behaviour, is the hypocrisy of the
civil society elite who turn the other way because they
obviously want to see no evil.
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