Political leaders are giving themselves immunity
From The Economist, “Politics this week: 19th-25th July 2008″ edition:
“Italy’s parliament approved a controversial law giving four senior officials immunity from prosecution, including the prime minister, Silvio Berlusconi. The law still has to be signed by the president; it is likely also to be challenged in the constitutional court.”
This comes on the heels of the Bush administration granting itself retroactive immunity for its torture crimes through the Military Commissions Act of 2006. Quoting directly from the law, Section 7, Habeas Corpus Matters:
“No court, justice, or judge shall have jurisdiction to hear or consider any other action against the United States or its agents relating to any aspect of the detention, transfer, treatment, trial, or conditions of confinement of an alien who is or was detained by the United States and has been determined by the United States to have been properly detained as an enemy combatant or is awaiting such determination.”
This is very worrisome, and can turn into a trend. It begs the question, when you raise yourself above the letter of the law, what makes you (the political leader of a supposedly democratic country), or in our case, a republic (a country ruled by law), different from a dictator such as Zimbabwe’s Mugabe or Lybia’s Qadafi?
I wonder what other political leaders are feeling “inspired” to put through their very own CYA measures, and how far will things go?
(3 votes, average: 5 out of 5)
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