The Appearance of Evil

Yesterday we spoke of the distinctions between law and policy and how citizens must develop healthy opposition to both when they are either unjust (law) or ineffective (policy).We shouldn’t just assume that law itself is only interested in rock solid evidence or historical precedent.  There are times when the legal establishment gives a judgment that provides great insight into how we should behave.  This is especially true for office holders and their responsibilities.A few years ago, Supreme Court of Canada justices made some revealing comments concerning how politicians are supposed to behave.  It was about a case in Newfoundland, where a politician put his wife on the payroll and then sought to continue on as though all was normal.  Something like this isn’t new, but the Supreme Court response brought a remarkable amount of clarity into the murky world of politics.  One of the justices stated in his conclusion:

There must be a preserving the appearance of integrity, and the fact that the government is fairly dispensing justice, are, in this context, as important as the fact that the government possesses actual integrity and dispenses actual justice.  The two concepts are, however, analytically distinct.  For a government, actual integrity is achieved when its employees remain free of any type of corruption.  On the other hand, it is not necessary for a corrupt practice to take place in order for the appearance of integrity to be harmed.  Protecting these appearances is more than a trivial concern.  This section recognizes that the democratic process can be harmed just as easily by the appearance of impropriety as with actual impropriety itself.

In my view, given the heavy trust and responsibility taken on by the holding of a public office or employ, it is appropriate that government officials are correspondingly held to codes of conduct which, for an ordinary person, would be quite severe.   For the public, who is the ultimate beneficiary of honest government, it is not so easy to sort out which benefits are legitimate and which are laden with a sinister motivation.  Moreover, it is inefficient for a government to be paralyzed by rumour and innuendo while an inquiry is made into the motivation behind a certain benefit or advantage conferred on an official. 

Currently, and in various jurisdictions, numerous governments are “paralyzed by rumour and innuendo.”  The requirement to hold politicians to higher standards when they don’t do it themselves is the absolute responsibility of citizens, and it isn’t easy.  The problem is not only when laws are broken, but when their very spirit is maligned.  The moment we accept such a state, then written laws can never protect us from deceptive power.  We live in such an age, but it doesn’t mean we have to accept it.  There are many good politicians and civil servants who live by the letter and the spirit of the law each and every day.  They should be rewarded.  But those who hold on to the veneer of appearance over substance or truth will only cause havoc among the citizenry.