Welsh Government promises ban on lying politicians
Welsh Government promises ban on lying politicians
Chris Haines – ICNN Senedd reporter The Welsh Government promised to introduce a law banning lying politicians before the next Senedd election after striking a last-minute deal to avert defeat. Mick Antoniw, who is counsel general, the Welsh Government’s chief legal adviser, reached an agreement wit...
The Welsh Government promised to introduce a law banning lying politicians before the next Senedd election after striking a last-minute deal to avert defeat.
Mick Antoniw, who is counsel general, the Welsh Government’s chief legal adviser, reached an agreement with Adam Price just before a key vote on creating an offence of deception.
Under the elections bill, Mr Price proposed a four-year disqualification for Senedd members, ministers or candidates found guilty of deliberate lying.
Mr Antoniw stopped short of supporting criminalisation as he invited the Senedd’s standards committee, which is holding an inquiry on accountability, to make proposals.
He said: “The Welsh Government will bring forward legislation before 2026 for the disqualification of members and candidates found guilty of deception through an independent judicial process.”
Might as well just ban politicians.
Whilst I love the idea of more truth in politics, I think the only way to do that sustainably is behaviourally through a political culture that values this, not legalistically through political rules. The latter isn't a substitute for the former.
Without a political culture that prioritises honesty and respectful debate, either this law will have to be a toothless gimmick, or it will become weaponised by malevolent populists against their political opponents. Neither of these outcomes would be a good thing.
To lie means to knowingly deceive. To have been misled is another thing. The latter is okay, but a question of competence, while the former is wilful disregard of duty and is a problem of corruption. In either case, waxing poetic with ideological undertones is at best pseudo-intellectual, at worst deceitful.
I'm not sure which one you would be, but if you knowingly lied to your electorate, you should get the boot.
Nuff said.
Democracy isn't about rules, it's about culture.
America is an example of what happens when you rely on the former not the latter. They have all sorts of rules against misconduct in office, and these rules are routinely abused by the far right to try to shut down their opponents - such as the Republican attempt to impeach Biden with no evidence as revenge for Trump's legitimate impeachment, or attempts to impeach the Democrat Attorney General in Georgia for investigating Trump's attempt to fix the election there, or the expelling of black lawmakers in Tennessee for protesting in support of gun law reform. Meanwhile Trump himself - a twice impeached, convicted criminal - is currently narrowly leading in the polls for their November presidential election...
You're under the impression that the rules you're advocating will just get used against the bad guys. But what will happen in reality is that the very well-funded bad guys will hire some very expensive lawyers who will use these laws to harass the good guys and tie them up in spurious investigations and court cases.
In a democracy, the ultimate punishment for an ill-intentioned politician - liars, cheats, rulebreakers - should come at the ballot box. In a democracy, the political culture makes it the job of the voters to doll out the punishment on election day. The more you take that responsibility away from voters by investing it in rules and regulations, the more you risk diluting voters' sense that this is their job, and the more ill-intents you'll find getting elected (a la Trump). Sometimes that's a risk worth taking, when we're talking about corruption or national security breaches - things where the damage a bad actor can do may so dwarf the voters' capacity to punish them. But I think voters are pretty capable of spotting a political liar and punishing them at the ballot box.