Thoughts from London

The good, the bad and the ugly justice
It was like the gunfight at OK Corral - the same old parable about good guys and the bad. But what an unexpected denouement. The scene was no longer the dusty, deserted streets of Dodge City. Or was it Tombstone? It does not really matter. The remake had moved from the wild west to the centre of American power. It was played out in Washington's Capitol Hill where political power and corporate power rub shoulders and are at times indistinguishable, one from the other.

Some of those who watched the televised fight on Capitol Hill where maverick British Labour Party MP took on a US Senate sub-committee that investigated sanctions-busting of the UN food-for-oil programme in Saddam Hussein's Iraq, might have been enthralled by what seemed like an hour of pure theatre. Many Americans might have hated the man who crossed the ocean to expose US malfeasance.

There was gunfire and blood-letting like in the old western tale. But it was all shooting from the lip instead of the hip. When the verbal firing stopped, the 'good' guys had been shot down, if they had not already slithered away earlier. The 'bad' guy walked out triumphant with a couple of flesh wounds that were hardly fatal.

American audiences might be accustomed to seeing reruns of Gary Cooper, Glen Ford and John Wayne knocking the daylight out of the baddies. But modern America would hardly have seen anything like last week's political drama when a single, perhaps garrulous, British MP walked into a staid Senate room and turned the guns on American politics, justice, the Bush administration and, by extension, the super power itself.

That man is George Galloway who defied Tony Blair over the Iraq war, was sacked for his troubles, contested a sitting Labour Party MP at this month's general election and proved that he could give better than he gets by winning the constituency of Bethnal Green and Bow.

If he was not willing to bow to Tony Blair on his highly contentious Iraq policy, he was hardly likely to bow to some senators from Capitol Hill, however important they might be on the other side of the Atlantic.

It all began when the bipartisan US Senate Investigations sub-Committee chaired by the Minnesota Republican Norman Coleman claimed that Galloway had benefited from the food- for- oil programme and received kickbacks.

The committee report claimed it had uncovered "significant evidence" that Galloway had been allocated millions of barrels of oil by the Saddam regime. The committee said its conclusions were based on previously disclosed documents from Iraq's Oil Ministry, interviews with senior officials of the Saddam regime and unnamed sources, probably the same 'reliable' sources that took the West for a huge ride over weapons of mass destruction.

Similar accusations made by two newspapers on either side of the Atlantic cost them money when court ordered Galloway damages. What was so shameful about this sorry saga that actually undermined America's loudly trumpeted spiel about justice and fair play, is that the senate committee did not ask George Galloway a single question about the evidence or give him an opportunity to answer the accusations before they made the charges in their report.

Chairman Norm Coleman has tried through his investigations into the UN programme, to bring down Secretary-General Kofi Annan because of his son's 'involvement' in one of the companies that had some hand in the programme.

Coleman has tried to play point-man for the Bush administration which has been angered by Annan's statement that the war on Iraq was "illegal". Bush believes that he is above the United Nations and the UN must do US bidding as though the rest of the world does not exist.

That is one reason the Bush administration is keen to have that irascible bully John Bolton as its ambassador to the UN. Bush hopes that Coleman and Bolton could do enough damage to Annan to force his resignation. But the Democratic staff on the same committee reported that the US administration had turned a blind eye to extensive sanctions violations.

The Democratic staff said the US not only knew about the sanctions-busting but that "on occasion the United States actually facilitated the illicit oil sales."

It surely takes a bladder full of gall to make accusations against the likes of Galloway when the US itself is found guilty of far more damaging and highly lucrative violations. Particularly so when Galloway was never given an opportunity to answer ahead of the report.

"This committee has never spoken to me, never written to me, never asked me a single question and did not even acknowledge last year my offer to go and speak to them," Galloway said it Washington.

Galloway had to virtually force himself on a committee that did not give him an opportunity to say his piece. What is worse is that some of the senators who had condemned him in the report kept away and two of them actually left before the British MP could speak his mind -- and devastatingly too.

Among the many verbal thunderbolts he directed at the committee and America, the most telling was his charge that it had abandoned the elementary principles of justice.

"I know that standards have slipped in Washington in recent years, but for a lawyer you're remarkably cavalier with any idea of justice," he told Coleman.

For a country that holds people incommunicado for years and tortures prisoners in the name of fighting terrorism, that refuses to bring detainees to court, it surely comes easily to senators without any pangs of conscience to traduce individuals denying them the right of defence.

If politically appointed judges pervert and subvert justice to serve their political masters or their idiosyncratic views on social and political issues, why should senators be expected to serve the cause of justice?

It is, of course, not only in the United States that the judiciary is sometimes subverted and politically anointed higher judicial officers play out their own agendas.

People are browbeaten and institutions that serve the public interest such as the media are cowed by those who are supposed to dispense justice, but now and then dispense with justice in an abusive display of power.

While political leaders and military officers suspected of genocide and war crimes are brought to trial before international courts and state parties chastised for human rights violations by the UN Human Rights Committee, there does not seem to be any provision for higher judicial officers who blatantly violate the sanctity of the rule of law and the judicial process to be brought before such international tribunals.

Seeing how the judicial system is or has been abused in some countries perhaps the international community should give some thought to setting up such an authority to try those judges who persistently act perversely.

After all, if the conduct of others holding public office could be held up to the mirror of public opinion, why not that of judicial officers. In his "Freedom of Expression and the criticism of Judges: A comparative study of European Legal Standards", Michael Addo points out that the European Court of Human Rights has stressed the importance of the principle of open debate and free speech. This, he says, also applies to the criticism of judges and their decisions. In the 21st century we need enlightened thinking, not the moth-eaten beliefs of self-appointed Robespierres.

Back to Columns