Sunday Times 2
Laws are like cobwebs
View(s):I was musing this month about a quotation that I had come across some years ago in a book titled ‘A Critical Essay Upon the Faculties of the Mind’.
Published in 1707, the essay was written by the Anglo-Irish writer Jonathan Swift (better known as the author of Gulliver’s Travels) and contained these lines ‘Laws are like cobwebs, which may catch small flies, but let wasps and hornets break through.’
It struck me that over three hundred years ago, this chap Swift certainly knew what he was talking about because let’s face it: what he said then is as true today in Sri Lanka as it was in 18th century England.
In our own country we see the relatively harmless flies and simple insects getting caught by the inflexible upholders of the law while the dangerous wasps and hornets arrogantly break the law which has little hope of ever netting them. We all know of people who are caught and prosecuted for minor crimes (like stealing to feed their family) and end up in jail – while those who commit major crimes (like masterminding a financial laundering scam in our Central Bank that caused a loss of more than US$ 11 million to the nation) end up thumbing their noses at the law and remaining free and at large in Singapore.
Fell a couple of Godakilara trees in Siyambalagaswewa and the police arrest you – but destroy swathes of Wilpattu National Park and you end up a government minister.
One of my lawyer friends explained this concept of legal inequality nicely when he told me, “Imagine a large circle inside which is a smaller circle inside which is a still smaller circle. The large circle represents all the actions we know are morally wrong – actions that are deemed BAD by all human beings and even the major religions of the world, actions that we all know are wicked and should not be done by decent people.”
“Within that large circle (which contains everything that we know is morally wrong) is a smaller circle which represents all those things that have been deemed LEGALLY wrong. Laws have been made – by kings, dictators or parliaments – declaring that these named things should not be done because they are against the law. These are the things about which parliament can legislate and pass laws. These actions are then established to be wrong — and enacted laws establish that anyone who does these things is breaking the sacred law of the land and making themselves liable to arrest, prosecution and punishment.
“Within this smaller circle, however, there is a third still smaller circle. It is a very small circle in comparison to the other two circles within which it lies. This small circle represents those actions which are morally wrong and legally wrong, where if committed, the person committing these acts can be brought before a court of law to be prosecuted and proved to have broken the law – and then is actually convicted and punished.
“So just because someone does something wrong, it does not necessarily follow that he or she will be punished for their actions”
In simple terms, what he was telling me was that it is only a very small proportion of the perpetrators of evil deeds that can actually be brought to justice.
It was an eyeopening explanation for a non-legal person like me. What my lawyer friend was telling me, basically, was that catching the people who we KNOW have done wrong is difficult enough while proving in court that they had done the evil things that “knowing people all know” they have done and then getting them punished is extremely difficult.
And it stands to reason that those who have money to spend, favours to grant and influence to peddle are more likely to get away with committing crimes than simple uninfluential ordinary folk like you and me.
So I am not surprised to see the former President appearing before the Presidential Commission of Inquiry probing the 2019 Easter Sunday terror attacks – and doing a Trump-like performance. As they say in our country “Everybody knows” that when the attacks took place on April 21st the president was in Singapore – and after his return, when the s*** had hit the fan, he absolved himself of all responsibility and tried to coerce and induce the then IGP to accept responsibility.
It is preposterous that the inability of the then president and prime minister to trust each other and have a cordial relationship led to the terrible deaths of more than 200 innocent people in our country in April 2019.
Some people’s behaviour certainly comes within that big circle – but I strongly suspect they will escape being put into that small circle of prosecution, conviction and punishment for his culpability.
Swift was right.