Lavrentiy Beria, was one of the most ruthless secret police chiefs during Joseph Stalin’s rule in Russia and Eastern Europe.
He once boasted that he could prove criminal conduct on anyone, even the innocent.
His most famous quote was “Show me the man and I’ll show you the crime”.
This was said at a time when Soviet authorities could easily pin a wrongdoing on anyone, especially someone who was considered a target.
In those days, dissidents were among those who were often targeted, people who opposed those in leadership.
In today’s modern world, the same could happen with the complexity and plethora of laws, rules and regulations that we have and are required to abide by.
When there are rules for everything then breaking a rule becomes easy.
And like the Stalin days, being dragged to face punishment may solely depend on officials and those in power rather than the rule or the law itself.
Also, in an overregulated environment, it becomes a challenge for ordinary and honest citizens to keep a tab on the many rules they are being subjected to (especially with no consultation and zero awareness).
In the end, it is possible that at some point ordinary citizens will break a few of the rules.
Or it may get to a point that it would become a headache just trying to avoid violating them.
If this happens during the elections period, then maneuvering one’s way could be like walking on eggshells and the fear of being found guilty could kill genuine participation and cause needless worry.
What I am saying is that rules have their merits and place in democracy and elections.
Nobody can doubt that.
But too much of them, to the point that they become unnecessary, pointless and burdensome to the public, may curtail fundamental liberties and freedoms.
In the opinion, ‘Too many laws turn innocents into criminals’, Edwin Meese III, a former US Attorney-General, points out that laws are good but too many of them create ‘traps for the innocent’, and threaten to turn otherwise ‘respectable, law-abiding citizens into criminals’.
Economists will tell us that over-regulation poses a barrier to a ‘dynamic free-market economy’ and hinders ‘effective participation’.
They also say that overregulation is almost always responsible for ‘a host of unintended consequences’, often ‘exacerbating the original problem or creating new problems’ that are ‘bigger than the one it was meant to correct’.
In the op-ed “Rules for everything” published in The Fiji Times on June 25, 2022, writer and Suva lawyer Richard Naidu poses the question “Is this really how our democracy should be?”
Mr Naidu argues that the FijiFirst government somehow seems to think that overregulation equates to ‘true democracy’ and a country is best served by ‘making rules for everything’ and ‘keeping politics to a level of purity that only they understand and can deliver’.
He points out that there is a generation of Fiji citizens who have grown up with the idea that ‘there have to be rules for everything’.
“Rules for what the media can say and do. Rules that we must never talk about race. Rules for how we run our schools and community organisations. Rules, even, for what our names must be.
“And, of course, rules for how we participate in politics.”
Mr Naidu says ‘none of these are necessary’.
“Few of them make any sense, except perhaps to minds focused on finger-wagging admonishment about all the bad things we could get up to without them,” he said.
“The same minds lack any imagination about all the good we might be able to do for each other if we were simply allowed, working together, to get on and do it.”
As we approach the general election, we are already beginning to see the effects of having ‘too many rules’.
Opposition political parties and their politicians are getting frustrated.
They feel that a national event like an election, which is supposed to be free and fair, is fast becoming an over-complicated national event that is very limiting.
Over-cluttering the election space with rules restrains free thinking, freedom of expression and the right to effectively participate in the
country’s governance.
Election laws and regulations should empower, guide, clarify and instruct.
Regulations can also cover campaign finance reporting procedures, counting, allocation of free airtime, polling venues, the processing of
voters on elections day and counting procedures.
However, if ‘overdone’, without much thinking and proper consultation, according to the ACE Electoral Knowledge Network, regulations may resemble ‘forests in which voters and educators can become lost or, in some cases, even entangled in by legislative underbrush’.
That is, in theory rules, laws and regulations and intentions behind them should be honest, designed to protect key players, create a culture of accountability and ensure that an election is free and fair and espouses integrity.
In practice, however, crowding the electoral space with too many rules may create an environment of fear and lead to civic lethargy.
In a commentary on www. forbes.com titled “A Nation of Absolutes: America’s Overregulation Problems”, author Benvenuto M.Mezzapele
argues that overregulation is most easily understood ‘through the lens of over disclosure’ Mezzapele says this is a byproduct of ‘regulatory agencies trying to control too much’ and this happens when those who make laws ‘mistake their role as deterministic, not participative’.
In 1994, Philip K. Howard, the author of a New York Times bestseller called The Death of Common Sense made the powerful statement that ‘law is supposed to be a framework for humans to make choices, not the replacement for free choice’.
Highlighting how overregulation forces an abandonment of instincts, he said ‘uber-rationality caused more harm than good’ and ‘people ended up worrying and equivocating’ and this ‘prevented progress’.
While the remarks above were made to mean the effects of rules for everything on the economy, one could draw parallels to elections and political participation.
Another concern about overregulation is that rules tend to become rushed, not properly thought out and introduced using inadequate or no
consultation, a very crucial regulatory tool needed to improve transparency, efficiency and effectiveness of regulation.
Consultation improves the quality of rules, improves compliance and reduces enforcement costs for both governments and citizens subject to
rules. Consultation also increases the information available to governments on which policy decisions can be based.
In the past few weeks neverending political debates and news of ‘breaking the rules’ and subsequent referrals to FICAC have featured heavily in the media.
The most obvious reasons for these seem to be our ‘rules for everything’ situation, which makes this election very different from previous ones.
The weird thing is that in 2014 and 2018, the rules we are seeing and hearing now were not thought necessary for the conduct of elections then and for ensuring they were free and fair.
Why now?
Your guess is as good as mine.
According to The People Alliance party leader, Sitiveni Rabuka, (FT October 25) one of the probable reasons was because of ‘the machinery of fear at work’ and the fear of losing in the polls.
Election rules are supposed to enhance transparency, accountability, integrity, effective participation, address fraud (not imaginary) and live up to the ideals of free and fair elections.
An election is not a sterile event.
It is vibrant, loud and full of activities.
Some of them can be over the top ‘crazy’ but hey this is politics.
It is full of drama anyway!
Therefore, while some limited degree of regulation is okay, it is important the scope of that regulation be restricted as far as practical.
Ace The Election Knowledge Network further says that where regulations are intended to produce a ‘level playing field’, there is the ‘underlying danger’ that they will ‘benefit some parties at the expense of others’.
“The ruling authorities of the day make the regulations, and these authorities (whether they consist of a dominant leader, a party, or a
coalition of parties) will be tempted to devise regulations that have an appearance of fairness, but which actually work to their own advantage,” the website adds.
“This point is…where parties are highly regulated and subsidized, they have a tendency to become excessively bureaucratic.”
Extensive restriction on campaign practice, including penalties, while ostensibly to punish illegal activity and make elections fair, can be used
(misused) to favour incumbents by making it difficult for new or opposition candidates to get the publicity they need.
In the upcoming election, we don’t need to get lost in a forest of too many rules.
The simpler and less vindictive they are, the better for free and fair elections, the better for citizens to freely choose their leaders, the better
for political parties and the better for democracy.
Politicians may think the ball is in their court, and changes could be introduced to suit them but the reality is when polling day comes only
voters will have the last laugh and final say.
Until we meet on this same page same time next week, stay blessed, stay healthy and stay safe.
