An exit strategy for crooks and dictators
Monday, 12 November 2007
Victor Mallet
JOSEPH Estrada is lucky to be Filipino. In September, he was jailed for life for plundering the Philippines when he was president between 1998 and 2001. Today the cheery Mr Estrada is a free man, pardoned by his successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
His conviction for taking more than 700m pesos (£8m) in bribes carries little weight in Malacañang, the presidential palace. Filipinos are a forgiving people and the granting of clemency by Mrs Macapagal, whose own administration is also accused of corruption, is in keeping with the sordid political traditions of the Philippines. Ferdinand Marcos, the corrupt dictator, never faced justice at home for his crimes. His widow, Imelda, and his children are now respected socialites and politicians.
If some leaders are too soft on their predecessors, others are too harsh. The brutal murder 11 years ago of Mohammad Najibullah, the Soviet-installed and hated Afghan leader, whose bloodstained body was left hanging outside the presidential palace by the Taliban, did nothing for peace or prosperity in Afghanistan.
Pakistan gained nothing either from the hanging and resulting political martyrdom of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the prime minister overthrown in a military coup 20 years ago by General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq. Zia later died in a mysterious air crash. Bhutto's daughter, Benazir, is today engaged in a tussle for political power with General Pervez Musharraf, the latest incarnation of Pakistani military rule.
How kings and presidents treat their predecessors - whether they forgive them, exile them or punish them for brutality and corruption - and how they expect to be treated in turn by their successors have been among the most pressing political questions since the dawn of history. The fates of many nations, from Africa to central Asia and from eastern Europe to Latin America, depend on the answers.
Burma is a case in point. It will be difficult to persuade the generals who form the military junta, and who recently ordered the shooting of Buddhist monks, to make way for a democratic government, but it would be impossible if they knew they faced execution after a change of power.
In Pakistan, Gen Musharraf, who has already escaped death at the hands of assassins, is perilously close to such a political cul-de-sac. He declared a state of emergency early this month aimed at his democratic opponents rather than the fanatical Islamists who are its purported targets. He ordered the arrest of hundreds of innocent people and suspended the rule of law. A quiet exit for the general will be hard to imagine if his troops shoot protesters on the streets of Karachi or Lahore.
In an ideal world, criminals would be punished for their crimes without regard for their status. The distasteful reality is former presidents, in the west as in the rest of the world, are treated harshly or leniently according to what is politically expedient.
The aim should be to make presidents worry about their legacy and their future, but not frighten them so much that they never step down. There is a solution. Between the excessive leniency of the Philippines and the pointless vengeance of the Taliban is the middle way mapped out by South Korea a decade ago.
In what was known in Seoul as "the trial of the century", former President Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death and his successor Roh Tae-woo to 22 years in jail for amassing $1.0bn and ordering the suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations when they ran South Korea between 1980 and 1993.
The 1996 trial had an electrifying effect in Asia. In countries such as Indonesia, the photographs of the shamefaced former rulers in prison fatigues carried a clear message: even dictators are accountable and can be punished for killings and corruption.
Like Mr Estrada, Mr Chun and Mr Roh were pardoned, although not with such unseemly haste. Koreans had demonstrated that their leaders could not commit crimes with impunity.
Dictators who know they face death or jail will not willingly cede power. Guaranteed forgiveness, however, encourages presidents to misbehave in the knowledge that they will escape retribution and perpetuates rotten political systems such as the one in the Philippines.
Neither summary execution nor a free pardon is the right way to deal with a president guilty of killings and corruption. The best answer is a real threat of jail and a promise - conditional on withdrawal from politics and the return of stolen goods - of eventual forgiveness.
......................................
FT Syndication Service
JOSEPH Estrada is lucky to be Filipino. In September, he was jailed for life for plundering the Philippines when he was president between 1998 and 2001. Today the cheery Mr Estrada is a free man, pardoned by his successor, Gloria Macapagal Arroyo.
His conviction for taking more than 700m pesos (£8m) in bribes carries little weight in Malacañang, the presidential palace. Filipinos are a forgiving people and the granting of clemency by Mrs Macapagal, whose own administration is also accused of corruption, is in keeping with the sordid political traditions of the Philippines. Ferdinand Marcos, the corrupt dictator, never faced justice at home for his crimes. His widow, Imelda, and his children are now respected socialites and politicians.
If some leaders are too soft on their predecessors, others are too harsh. The brutal murder 11 years ago of Mohammad Najibullah, the Soviet-installed and hated Afghan leader, whose bloodstained body was left hanging outside the presidential palace by the Taliban, did nothing for peace or prosperity in Afghanistan.
Pakistan gained nothing either from the hanging and resulting political martyrdom of Zulfikar Ali Bhutto, the prime minister overthrown in a military coup 20 years ago by General Mohammed Zia ul-Haq. Zia later died in a mysterious air crash. Bhutto's daughter, Benazir, is today engaged in a tussle for political power with General Pervez Musharraf, the latest incarnation of Pakistani military rule.
How kings and presidents treat their predecessors - whether they forgive them, exile them or punish them for brutality and corruption - and how they expect to be treated in turn by their successors have been among the most pressing political questions since the dawn of history. The fates of many nations, from Africa to central Asia and from eastern Europe to Latin America, depend on the answers.
Burma is a case in point. It will be difficult to persuade the generals who form the military junta, and who recently ordered the shooting of Buddhist monks, to make way for a democratic government, but it would be impossible if they knew they faced execution after a change of power.
In Pakistan, Gen Musharraf, who has already escaped death at the hands of assassins, is perilously close to such a political cul-de-sac. He declared a state of emergency early this month aimed at his democratic opponents rather than the fanatical Islamists who are its purported targets. He ordered the arrest of hundreds of innocent people and suspended the rule of law. A quiet exit for the general will be hard to imagine if his troops shoot protesters on the streets of Karachi or Lahore.
In an ideal world, criminals would be punished for their crimes without regard for their status. The distasteful reality is former presidents, in the west as in the rest of the world, are treated harshly or leniently according to what is politically expedient.
The aim should be to make presidents worry about their legacy and their future, but not frighten them so much that they never step down. There is a solution. Between the excessive leniency of the Philippines and the pointless vengeance of the Taliban is the middle way mapped out by South Korea a decade ago.
In what was known in Seoul as "the trial of the century", former President Chun Doo-hwan was sentenced to death and his successor Roh Tae-woo to 22 years in jail for amassing $1.0bn and ordering the suppression of pro-democracy demonstrations when they ran South Korea between 1980 and 1993.
The 1996 trial had an electrifying effect in Asia. In countries such as Indonesia, the photographs of the shamefaced former rulers in prison fatigues carried a clear message: even dictators are accountable and can be punished for killings and corruption.
Like Mr Estrada, Mr Chun and Mr Roh were pardoned, although not with such unseemly haste. Koreans had demonstrated that their leaders could not commit crimes with impunity.
Dictators who know they face death or jail will not willingly cede power. Guaranteed forgiveness, however, encourages presidents to misbehave in the knowledge that they will escape retribution and perpetuates rotten political systems such as the one in the Philippines.
Neither summary execution nor a free pardon is the right way to deal with a president guilty of killings and corruption. The best answer is a real threat of jail and a promise - conditional on withdrawal from politics and the return of stolen goods - of eventual forgiveness.
......................................
FT Syndication Service