The atrophy of political ethics

An argument can be made that politics is an ethics-free zone, where there is no honesty, no moral imperatives and the line between right and wrong ceases to exist. It was around that theme that Plan A for this column was formulated with a cynical look at the actions of a range of our politicians over the last year relative to the Panama Papers and other issues. And then there was Mr Comey.

Unless you have been living in a darkened and news-proofed box for the last 36 hours you will have become aware however tangentially that President Donald Trump has fired the director of the FBI. The early weeks and months of the Trump presidency have been something of a rollercoaster ride, but the sacking of the director of the leading agency investigating crime in America is not something that happens every day. The last such was in 1993 when Clinton sacked the FBI director for financial irregularities.

Why there is a whiff of fish about the Comey sacking is in the timing. ‘Perception is everything in politics’ goes the saying and it is, I think, a universal truth much like ‘no smoke without fire’. The perception in the hours that followed the Comey exit was that he got the boot because his investigations into whether or not the Russians were involved in rigging the American election in favour of Agent Orange were getting too close for comfort. It was quickly noted across the global commentariat that any denial of this by the White House — and it was indeed quickly denied — was going to fall on deaf ears and the world would quickly come to the conclusion, rightly or wrongly, that the Trump administration was as bent as a paperclip and up to its elbows in cahoots with the Russians to scupper Hilary Clinton in her run for the presidency. The last president to resign from his office for having lied to the American people was Richard Nixon. Watch this space.

Meanwhile, here in the Land of the Pure a Joint Investigation team (JIT) is gearing up to dig into the Panama Papers affair. This epic has been fascinating a small minority and widely ignored by just about everybody else for the last year. Nobody has resigned yet, nobody directly involved on any side has been sacked and the status quo is being maintained but with a carnival gloss of flying lawsuits alleging a lurid range of wrongdoings by one and all. None of these stand a snowballs’ chance in hell of ever making it to a finding of right or wrong, guilty or innocent, and there is no shortage of Doubting Thomas’s myself included of the view that the JIT will not go anywhere other than into a very deep sand-dune. Game over and bring on the next election please which will again be won by the PML-N.

As has already been observed by one of our honourable justices commenting on the hearings prior to the formation of the JIT; the average man on the street corner on presentation of the evidence submitted thus far would conclude that somebody, somewhere, has not been telling the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth.

One does not need a legal mind to discern that dishonesty was well to the fore thus far. It was not even particularly well disguised either. It wandered on to the stage in full fig, Harlequin suit freshly laundered, and ponced around bold as brass for all to see. A bundle of ethics were tied to a stake and promptly incinerated, the ashes scattered to the winds and nobody blinked an eye.

And has there been any protest about this blatant driving of several coaches and teams of horses through a thicket of personal and national values? Of course not. Perish the thought. Where this might differ from what is unfolding in America is that our monsters are largely impervious to public opinion which is never well organised anyway, but over the water there is a long tradition of principled protest against manifest injustices and dishonesties. Honest Americans may pull down Trump. Honest Pakistanis would have difficulty pulling down a roller-blind, never mind a corrupt leader.

Published in The Express Tribune, May 11^th, 2017.

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