01 December 2016
“Made it, Ma! Top of the World!”
You can’t have a criminal as head of state. Can you?
by Neil Tidmarsh
The best political joke in recent months? It came from Alain Juppé, the favourite and not-so-colourless contender in the recent race for the leadership of France’s Republican party. He was asked if he thought his criminal record might count against him in the election (he was given a suspended 18-month prison sentence in 2002 for his part in the illegal funding of various dodgy political arrangements for President Chirac.) He replied:
“When it comes to a criminal record, it is better to have a past than a future.”
A telling and witty thrust at the other main contender for the party leadership, Nicolas Sarkozy, who is facing a number of allegations and investigations, including the bribery of a high court judge and the acceptance of cash from Libya’s late President Gaddafi.
As it happens, of course, neither of these two won; Francois Fillon came up on the outside and blasted them both out of the race; he now looks likely to win next year’s presidential election. The blameless and untarnished Francois Fillon, who has neither a criminal past nor a criminal future, who is a respectable Catholic traditionalist, whose wife is from Abergavenny for heaven’s sake; of course he won. You can’t have a criminal as head of state. Can you?
You might not think so, but only if you haven’t been reading the newspapers this week.
Just as Brazil disappears from the headlines – taking with it an impeached president, and an ex-president scrambling for immunity from prosecution, and an entire political establishment being picked off one politician at a time by fearless prosecutors on Petrobras’s trail of bribery and corruption – along comes South Korea to take its place.
More or less every president since democracy was established in South Korea in 1987 has been charged with corruption after leaving office, but it seems that the current President Park will be the first to face prosecutors before retirement. This week, prosecutors alleged that Ms Park colluded with her friend, confidante and spiritual adviser, the shamaness Choi Soon Sil, who was recently charged with extorting over £50 million from the country’s top companies in a scandal which appears to involve the buying of political influence. Thousands, if not millions, of protestors marched in the streets, demanding her resignation. Parliament is planning to impeach her, with opposition MPs likely to submit an impeachment motion in the coming days. She offered to stand down a few days ago, but her terms are unclear, and many MPs see this merely as a ploy to avoid impeachment or outright resignation.
Perhaps she could take a few lessons from President Zuma of South Africa, who has survived a barrage of accusations and charges in recent years. Nevertheless, it now seems that 783 charges of corruption made against him some years ago (linked to an arms deal) are about to be reinstated; a court is due to rule on the issue within the next week. He was in Havana for the funeral of Fidel Castro this week, keeping company with many other of the world’s most controversial leaders, including President Bouterse of Suriname. President Bouterse doesn’t get to leave his country much these days, not since an international warrant was issued for his arrest; in 2006, in the Netherlands, he was convicted of trafficking cocaine.
Meanwhile, back in Africa this week, the king of the Rwenzururu tribe, Charles Mumbere, was charged with murder following the death of 87 people in clashes between his guards and Ugandan security forces. Elsewhere, in Ukraine, the trial began of five officers accused of opening fire on demonstrators in February 2014, when more than a hundred pro-European protestors were killed; their deaths led to the downfall of pro-Russian president Victor Yanukovych and to the current conflict with Russia. Ex-president Yanukovych took part in the trial proceedings himself, but only via a video-link with a court-room in Russia. Many think that he is responsible for those deaths and so should be on trial himself, facing criminal charges. Perhaps that’s why he doesn’t fancy setting foot in a courtroom in his own country. President Assad of Syria is another head of state believed by many to have blood on his hands; threats to prosecute him for war crimes have been made by all kinds of bodies around the world, but this week lawyers in Germany actually filed a lawsuit against him for alleged war crimes in the city of Aleppo.
We haven’t even mentioned President Duterte of the Philippines, who may or may not have taken part himself in the vigilante killings of which he seems to approve (a hit-man, in a court of law recently, claimed that he did). But I think we have to mention Silvio Berlusconi, former Prime Minister of Italy. He was convicted of tax fraud back in 2013, remember? Yes, tax fraud – what a boring charge, after years of much more colourful accusations and controversies. Somehow he managed to avoid imprisonment, and worked out his sentence by doing social community work instead. It did for him as Prime Minister, however, and should have put an end to his political life altogether. But – believe it or not – he’s back.
This week he’s been campaigning against current Prime Minister Renzi’s proposals to reform the Upper Chamber. And if those proposals are rejected in this weekend’s referendum, it seems that Silvio could soon be back in power. “If the ‘no’ vote wins, Berlusconi has a future” said Giovanni Orsina, professor of contemporary history at Luiss-Guido Carli University in Rome. “The 10% to 12% of the vote he still has [as leader of a revived Forza Italia party] could earn him a place in a coalition with Renzi’s Democratic Party if we have a general election.” And that’s with a number of criminal cases against him – the ‘Ruby’ case and one involving the illegal funding of political parties – still rumbling on. A criminal past and a criminal future? As ever, Silvio seems to be the man who has more than his fair share of everything.
In Raoul Walsh’s 1949 film noir White Heat, the ruthless and ambitious gangster Arthur ‘Cody’ Jarret (played by James Cagney) goes down in a hail of police bullets shouting “Made it, Ma! Top of the world!” Perhaps someone should remake it for the 21st century, with Cody the criminal choosing politics rather than gang violence as the way to fulfil his ambitions.
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