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Innocent until proven guilty

Apr 05, 2014 Editorial

There are some tenets that every society observes and they do so for good reason. One tenet is that everyone deserves a hearing before anyone could pass judgement. All too often we in the society are quick to judge because for one, the issue over which we pass judgement is always good for a talking point.
As a people we are bored more often than not simply because we fail to use our time effectively. The result is that we seek every opportunity to create a situation that would make for a good conversation point. That is the reason for some reports being distorted after a few rounds. Everyone adds to the story merely to embellish it so that it really makes for interesting conversation.
Another tenet is more legal that practical. An individual is innocent until proven guilty. There are many addenda to this tenet. One of them is that it is better to let ninety-men guilty  go free than to execute one innocent man.
Overt time lawyers would repeat this mantra because it suits them and it also serves to protect the society. And so we come to Priya Manickchand, herself a lawyer turned politician. This is a woman who at one time championed the cause of the down-trodden in the courts. She worked through the legal aid centre. On many occasions she would have found instances of people being sanctioned merely because they did not have the wherewithal to defend themselves.
Ms Manickchand has also portrayed herself as a person who would go to the end of the earth to represent the underdog. We have seen her reaction to a satirical piece about a woman who may have offered her services as a lady of the night. It is not that Ms Manickchand wanted to chide the woman for her societal shortcoming. Rather, the lawyer contended that the woman was free to do as she wished as many women might have done given the circumstances.
This is a case of Ms Manickchand informing critics of the woman that they should not judge anyone. It is therefore shocking that the very Ms Manickchand would first of all adopt a position that an individual is guilty, even without a trial. That could not have been part of her training. She accuses a man of rape and holds firm to that conviction although the matter is still before the courts. The man is guilty until proven innocent.
The accused has not been given a chance by Ms Manickchand who not only demands her right to be allowed to make her damning statements, but who also insists that she has that right.  She was asked to apologise for her outburst directed at a member of the parliamentary opposition benches. She bluntly refused.
Then she contended that as a mother she could not apologise to a rapist, who in this case is not the Member of Parliament. In fact, the Member of Parliament has nothing to do with her allegation except that he shares the same lineage as the person Ms Manickchand is accusing.
Simply to tell the world that she would not apologise for labelling someone who has not even been proven guilty is an arrogance that defies logic. To add insult to injury, she gets a remigrant to jump to her defence with some of the most stupid and irresponsible arguments. He talks about people with “relatives charged with criminal behaviour”. The same should apply to apologists who may have their progenies serving as guests of the state. In the case of the latter there could be the accusation that the person may be pandering to the government for a reduction of sentence or special treatment for the incarcerated one.
There can be no excuse for the outburst, no matter how strongly one feels about an incident. The parliamentary opposition members would never shout “thief” in direct reference to some members of the government in the same way the members of the media have not definitively called them thieves although there have been the accusations and more.

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