By Uncle Sam
One fundamental principle by which the government exercises its authority in a constitutional democracy, such as Sierra Leone, is the rule of law. A concept that has been with the world for well over 25 centuries, it dictates that every act or action of each of the arms of Government – the parliament, the presidency and the courts – must be consistent with the Constitution. It is the abiding duty of all organs of government and authorities exercising legislative, executive or judicial powers to respect the rule of law and comply with the due process of law.
In contemporary jurisprudence, the concept – first propounded by Aristotle – is characterised as the condition in which every member of the society accepts the authority of the law, where nobody is liable to be punished except for a breach or infraction of law committed and established before the Courts. The concept of rule of law finds easy expression in the term "justice", which must be done at all times and must be seen as having been done. It abhors injustice to anyone, propagating the notion of equality of all before the law without regard to socio-economic status, education or official position.
This calls to mind the public shaming of some teachers by the Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) for their alleged involvement in examination malpractice. In one account posted online, the ACC Commissioner is quoted as saying that the said teachers (victims) were “caught red-handed”, asserting that the improvised action of the ACC was a test of the nation’s “sensitivity and acceptance” of the Commission’s new anti-corruption strategy.
The President, the country’s Fountain of Honour and Justice and symbol of national unity and sovereignty, has rightly apologised to the affected teachers – a noble action that bears a strong constitutional and moral content. It reflects a realisation that he is stronger and more honourable when he and/or his agencies accept and respect the supremacy of the law over themselves and their offices.
The Commissioner had been my Facebook friend – whose expressed thoughts I had read – long before he was appointed Commissioner of the ACC. He is a brilliant young man. The action of the ACC and his attempt to rationalise it, however, betrays mischief, if not inordinate ambition. He seems oblivious of the fact that the ability of the ACC to draw support for its strategies and goals depends on the legal content of its actions. This humble intervention is, thus, a tribute to him and his future. It will be impertinent for me to second-guess him. The ACC is for the future of his generation.
The law has been too generous to the ACC for it to require anything outside the law. I have reservations about the donation of investigative and prosecutorial powers to one agency. It is on those two tracks that the ACC wants to drive its ambition of being imperial and magisterial.
The ACC gives the wrong impression that its “red-handed” evidence is sui generis (of special status) that converts the alleged act of the teachers into a strict liability. What the alleged blood on the hands of the teachers (“guilty act”) empowered the ACC to do was to arrest the said teachers instantly and charge them to court. At the trial, the ACC will have to discharge the further burden of proving that the teachers’ alleged guilty act was matched by guilty minds.
To qualify the ACC’s action as a test of the nation’s “sensitivity and acceptance” of the Commission’s new anti-corruption strategy will be foisting a moral burden on the already traumatised populace. The unfortunate statement also betrays the ambition of the ACC to prosecute the fight against corruption in accordance with its conscience. NO! The Commissioner has no power to set a moral bar for Sierra Leoneans or gauge their moral content with his actions. The establishment of the ACC is in itself an unimpeachable assertion that most Sierra Leoneans abhor corruption. The ACC is the metaphor – or personification – of the country’s response to corruption and related vices. The ACC, therefore, must root its actions and strategies on the rule of law and due process.
I agree that corruption is ingrained in the nation’s fabric. However, fighting it requires much more than such brawny improvisations by the ACC. The Bible says, in Romans 3:23, "For all have sinned, and come short of the glory of God.” This reference traces sin to the original sin of Adam and Eve, the explanation being that after that sin, all humans, except Jesus and Mary – and perhaps, Adam and Eve themselves – suffer from a kind of corruption that makes it inevitable to sin.
Over the centuries, Metaphysicists have tried to use the original sin doctrine to explain social vices, viewing corruption as a manifestation of the perversion of the human psyche and derogation from Godlike human identity. In other words, man is moral and has divine intelligence and guidance. What dehumanises man, subjecting him to odd actions, is the perversion of the human psyche coupled with the contamination of the essence of humanity.
Stemming from this perspective is the belief that virtually everyone in the social order is corrupt. Thus, to free the society of corruption requires an institutional approach capable of re-humanising the individuals that form the society. This calls for a total reorientation of everyone in the social order for the purpose of imbuing them with the requisite mind-set which conveys nobility of character etched in value-laden conduct and propriety as a way of life.
The path of incorruptibility requires revisiting our school curriculum and emphasising the teaching of morality and values, besides strengthening the institutions of moral rearmament. It further includes eliminating those phenomenal manifestations that induce the compromising of the moral nexus by the individual. Poverty, for example, is a risk factor in the fight against corruption.
Here, one can theologically and philosophically aver that there is something in the humanity that makes us susceptible to corruption. It is easier to associate greed, avarice and perversion with the metaphysical because scientists have not explained why people are corrupt. In fact, the corruptibility of our political officeholders defies logic. They earn above average and sit atop the social ladder. They enjoy fame, attention and worship from the rest of us. This class of people seems the subject of the Bible’s warning that though they will always promise the citizenry liberty, they themselves are the purveyors of corruption. Instead of being liberators, our leaders are prisoners of corruption.
While hoping that some research findings can one day point towards verifiable answers concerning why our political office-holders indulge in corruption, let’s look around for solutions. I’d start by submitting that corruption gives its beneficiaries undue financial security, power, influence and fame. They forget that money for money’s sake is no money. What matters to them is what comes with it.
If most of us worship money, then the society is prone to worshipping those who have money irrespective of how they got it. If most of the people are poor and depend on others for their livelihood, that dependence surely corrupts them, eroding their ability to ask the right questions. These shortcomings include our dependent-mindedness and lack of self-worth manifested in the pressure we put on others for the satisfaction of our needs; the reverence we give to the rich irrespective of how they came about their riches; our inability to associate the work we do or don’t do with our socioeconomic accomplishments or wants, and the false belief that wealth is gifted or denied us by a cosmic being.
In summary, the re-humanising process must include:
- ensuring that every citizen has access to quality education;
- sustained civic education from the primary schools to the tertiary institutions;
- sustained reorientation programmes and teachings by churches and mosques;
- moral reorientation campaigns through movies, soaps and reality shows;
- faithful, genuine promotion of national integration and unity;
- discouragement of discrimination of any kind;
- protection and defence of the liberty of the individual by the Government irrespective of his/her place of origin, circumstance of birth, sex, religion, status, ethnic or political persuasion and ties;
- governing by example, demonstrating zero tolerance for corruption;
- managing and controlling the commonwealth of the nation in a manner as to secure the maximum welfare and freedom of every citizen on the basis of socioeconomic justice and equality of opportunity; and
- enforcing the rule of law, promoting the independence and impartiality of the judiciary.
Shaming and punishing the corrupt meets the retributive principle of criminal justice, but it has not been proven to be an effective deterring weapon. The corrupt, including thieves, have allies in the rest of the society. Like all developing countries, some Sierra Leoneans are morally ambivalent. Shaming or punishing their thieves does not glorify the ACC in their hearts and minds. Rather, it bonds them, propelling them to take up arms in defence of their "constituency". Those Sierra Leoneans are prisoners of corruption. It takes more to free them from that mental prison.
© 2019 Politico Online
