Believe me, corruption has a legal face!
Lawyers in court love to pick the limelight, strutting and fretting their moment on the stage with roundabout rhetoric arguments on circumstantial and peripheral issues, and raising dust with verbiage on everything but the honest truth.
And the judges too, specialists in skiving the responsibility, again with good sounding words, which we are left to interpret, rule, and justice miscarries and dies at the feet of its “doctors”.
So it was that recently we were treated to a long quote from Shakespeare’s Merchant of Venice in a court case that seemed more of a soap opera than truly a chamber of justice. “A pound of flesh, was the agreement, so a pound of flesh I demand, nothing less”.
What is written is written! We go by the letter — corruption in the legal corridors wears legal make-up!
It is careful about its appearance! It seems to hide in the very interpretation of the law!
That very quote, that eventually conferred justice to Antonio, meted against a cruel, unfair and very powerful Shylock (from where the unjust “Shylocks” come) is precisely put on its head, in the corrupt justice system.
Tremendous precision about the measuring scales of the “pound of flesh” and the technicalities of the laws and processes have deprived many of true justice and given easy relief through miscarriage of justice to many powerful heavily guilty individuals.
Even from old times, and in the crudest of situations, justice seems so elusive for the poor in the presence of the rich. The lens of those meting out justice seems many times myopic, even when they wear heavy glasses from intense reading of laws.
Great is the struggle to get simple representation for the pauper whose land has been grabbed by a Shylock, and often the magistrate again, is in haste to agree with the defence on technicalities — that some paper or other is missing, some affidavit, or just the filing form missed a date.
The villain steward of justice quickly dismissing the cry for justice, letting a powerful individual walk away with wrongly gained property as a “pound of flesh”.
But let a powerful individual, caught in serious wrongdoing, be accused of fraud, theft, physical abuse, road accident, murder, you name it.
Suddenly, the gates of justice open wide, with a battery of high ranking lawyers rushing to offer their services “gratis” to defend the rights and innocence of the mighty.
We then hear a lot of technicalities without substance, and rhetorical “Shakespeare” quotes, as if this was an evening entertainment with no real consequences.
The law seems to accommodate and shift lanes to tip the balance to not guilty, or is it only the law that shifts the balance?
The media on its part plays its well scripted role, adding spice to the legal drama by focusing on the beauty of those very elocutions of nothingness! How well said we all retort!
The poison of a snake does not depend on the beauty of the snake!
The beautiful blue coral snake’s bite is most poisonous, killing instantly and horribly by inducing full paralysis in seconds!
So, too, the poison of corruption of hearts, total numbness of conscience, runs deep in our judicial system, under the mask of beautiful words and objectivity that has no relation to truth!
The legally stipulated “pound of flesh” is that hidden corrupt malice that bears down truth.
You see, corruption is something deeper than mere financial gain. It’s short-circuiting of human reason that burns the fuse of the heart, making us totally heartless, and sharp in applying reason to matters that only imply self-gain.
Corruption is a blindness to truth in any of its forms. Indeed, it has crept like a boa around our justice system, and slowly strangulated justice and truth, and like the legendary python, entranced society through the hypnotising eloquence of quick-witted, all-too-willing dishonest doctors of laws.
Might it be it’s not all pro bono? Pro bono, comes from pro bono publico, which means for the public good, but it’s short form pro bono ironically translates, for good cause or even, with good intent.
True, many lawyers, and indeed judges, don’t subscribe to this manner of conduct, but most are too scared, or too comfortable to rock the boat and stand out and oppose it publicly.
Out with verbose dishonest arguments! Breaking the chains of corruption depends and starts with the “me” of our legal practitioners … their conscience, and if they can care to listen to their God, many Antonios will be saved from greedy Shylocks.
Archbishop Muheria is in charge of Nyeri Catholic Archdiocese.
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