Violence, the chicken and the egg
Carlos Alberto Montaner
The upcoming
elections in Guatemala hinge on the violence, which is increasingly frequent.
In Mexico, Brazil, El Salvador, Honduras, Colombia, Argentina and Venezuela,
the same is true.
Street
violence is a national obsession. In Hugo Chávez's unfortunate country,
after eight years of his chaotic mandate, more than 100,000 Venezuelans have
been murdered and barely 3 percent of those cases have gone to court.
Caracas is Baghdad without mosques or Americans. When insecurity is
excessive, this feeling of defenselessness becomes the top priority. To have
a job is important; to go on breathing and living free from terror are even
more valuable. It is very unpleasant to constantly look behind you, forever
fearful of a fatal aggression. The time has come, the polls say, for a
“tough hand.”
That may be
so, but the “tough hand” is proof that the Rule of Law does not work, and
for that reason we turn to a ferocious policy of truncheons and thrashings.
It is not a question that suddenly the bad guys have multiplied. Deep inside,
it's a systemic problem. Legislation is inadequate. In general, there's a
shortage of good parliamentarians and among them are very few experts in
criminal or trial law. Also missing are the solution-seeking reflections of
specialists in criminology. When Rudy Giuliani decided to combat crime in
New York City -- and managed to decimate the evildoers -- he began by
reviewing the good sociological theories that explained the proliferation of
crime and the ways to stop crime. One must always start from a theoretical
presumption.
In Latin
America, judges, prosecutors and defense lawyers (with some exceptions) are
insufficiently trained because the legal profession has gradually devalued
itself. According to a popular saying, those who are inept become lawyers or
teachers. Judges are usually overburdened with cases and do not have the
material means necessary to impart swift and equal justice. They work in
dilapidated facilities that often lack decent archives. The same applies to
the police: little academic training, extremely limited resources, and
miserable wages. Frequently, the criminals are better armed than the cops
and are infinitely more powerful.
The problem is
that having a good Rule of Law requires three essential elements:
-
he
collective decision to place oneself under the authority of the law (the
cultural factor);
-
a ruling
class capable of making a profound diagnosis and arbitrating solutions (the
intellectual factor); and
-
enormous
amounts of material resources (the economic factor).
A good Rule of
Law implies having demanding universities, sagacious legislators, honest and
well-educated judges surrounded by competent assistants, and reasonably
trained and paid policemen. All that costs a lot of money.
How is that
money raised? There's only one way: by creating a dense entrepreneurial
fabric that generates sufficient surpluses. Wealth is produced only by the
successful companies that make profits, invest, grow and pay taxes. Outside
that mechanism, the only alternatives are to get a loan or rob your neighbor.
The British Rule of Law -- with its colorful Parliament, its solemn bewigged
magistrates, its Scotland Yard and its bobbies -- exists because the
country's productive apparatus is able to foot the bill. If we produce
little, and therefore generate a marginal surplus, the quality of our public
sector will perforce be mediocre or bad.
That truism
leads us to an inescapable deduction: in this case, the riddle of the
chicken and the egg does not apply. The alleviation of problems (they're
never fully solved) begins with the creation of a material base capable of
funding an efficient State, and that means building the foundations of a
society that is hospitable to investments and the creation of businesses. A
quality State requires a quality entrepreneurial fabric. It's just that
simple.
September 23, 2007
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