Editorial

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The sellout

The paradox of rule by jumbo cabinet is that politicians are asked to deliver or depart, when on the one hand the government is practicing privatization like the heavenly manthra for salvation on the economic front. Political expediency is axiomatic to this government, hence, the large Cabinet that characterizes the practices of patronage politics at it's worst.

But, if political expediency is the government's credo, it's economic credo is that of accelerating the privatization process.

It's analogous to the current political dilemma on whose horns the government seems to be haplessly impaled. What's supreme the parliament or the judiciary? The question should have it's sister poser. Which is better, government inefficiency and corruption, or NGO efficiency and corruption?

On page 10 of this issue, The Sunday Times deals with this issue and it's ramifications to a relevant extent.

The privatization process is now being carried on to it's logical rapacious end. Take for instance, the World Bank insistence that there should be a tax on water.

The World Bank, the Asian Development Bank, and by extension it's collaborator-in-chief, the United States of America, are attempting to secure a toe-hold on the sources of water in this country, the forests and it's natural resources. There are on-going committee deliberations on intellectual property, which are no doubt conscious of the fact that US companies are patenting indigenous medicinal plants and Third World foodstuffs in the US. The World Trade Organization, that monstrous champion of free trade is spreading it's tentacles to the far corners of the world, in it's relentless pursuit of a misshapen idea of a global village.

It's against this backcloth of rapidly developing events, that the President and her Cabinet must be cognizant and ever watchful of the slow disintegration of government, and the slow but steady takeover of the country by the mushrooming NGO's and their hand-maidens.

Punishment, and crime

"The return of the hangman as part of our public life, is however, in the view of the Civil Rights Movement, unacceptable in any circumstances.'' That's from a new CRM newsletter, which is perhaps written in the after-gloom of the mass murderer Timothy MacVeigh's sickening execution in Indiana, USA, probably the most watched and reported public execution of our times.

The hangman's return, and now the deviation from accepted conventions with regard to bail law in this country, are all supposed to curtail crime, and deliver society from this insane spiral of crime and lawlessness. At least, that's the recipe. But, as the CRM points out, these measures which are but reactions to events are not a deterrent to crime, as research on the subject has proved. Prompt impartial investigation and apprehension of criminals is the best deterrent. Keep politics out of crime. Throw the book at them, and you will be able to drop the noose.

The Political Column

Editorial/ Opinion Contents