Achi news desk-
The best way to restore trust in politics is to make it a criminal offense for politicians to lie, says Welsh MP Adam Price.
Price has introduced legislation in the Sened, the Welsh parliament, that would make it a criminal offense for a politician to knowingly deceive the public. Those found guilty will be temporarily disqualified from sitting in the Sened, or run away from their position.
While some countries already have laws against lying to parliament, this legislation, if passed, would be the first to prevent politicians from lying more generally.
Price, a member and former leader of the centre-left Plaid Cymru party, tabled the proposal as an amendment to an electoral reform bill currently before parliament.
It has since been separated from this bill and sent to the Standards Conduct Committee for review and consideration. All four parties in the Senate have come out in favor of the proposal, and Price says he expects it to be put to a vote within the next two months.
Price has made truth in politics the focus of his political career since he He called for the impeachment of then Prime Minister Tony Blair In 2004, for creating what has become False claims about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq While he was sending British troops to war.
Price spoke to him as it happens Hosted by Nick Coxell. Here is part of their conversation
I have to ask you. You have to be honest. In all your years of politics, have you ever lied? screwed? Even a white lie, just a little?
I hope not. I’d be a real hypocrite if I had.
It was part of a long campaign for me. It started with the Iraq war when I was an MP in Westminster. But, you know, here we are almost 20 years later, and I think the issue of truth in politics has never been greater in democracy around the world.
We have faith in politics and politicians. And the question is what are we going to do about it? Well, here’s something we can do about it. We can make it a criminal offense for politicians to lie.
So if there was one lie that ignited it for you, was it more from the war?
For me, absolutely. And it shows that, you know, it can have very serious consequences. Politicians make decisions every day that affect our lives, but they can be decisions about life and death, peace and war.
Setting a standard, a norm, that it is never acceptable for a politician to lie on purpose should be important to all of us. And that’s something that, unfortunately, we didn’t do.
Maybe we’ve learned to accept the kind of bullshit, the kind of post-truth politics, the wave of disinformation now that is really kind of eroding the foundations of democracy. And we have to draw a line.
But what you said there, is part of what will make enforcement difficult, I imagine. How do you prove that someone lied on purpose? They can say they just believed something at the time.
We have to find the right balance, don’t we? Because what we don’t want to do is undermine freedom of expression. Obviously it’s protected.
What we are talking about here is deliberate fraud. And yes, it does set the bar high. You will need to prove intent to deceive.
But that’s what we do in fraud cases. This is what we do in defamation cases. So there are lots of legal examples where we do the same thing.
and in other professions. If a doctor lies, then they are eliminated. If a lawyer lies, then they are disbarred. And yet we seem to have endured a democratic culture where politicians can lie with impunity. Well, it has to stop.
At its heart, it’s a very simple principle. It is never, ever, unacceptable for a politician to lie on purpose.– Adam Price, Welsh Member of Parliament
According to the fix you propose, just specifically, how would it work? What will happen to the Welshman? [member of Senedd] If they are found to have lied?
As with any criminal offense, anyone can file a complaint. It will have to be investigated, first, or considered by the police if there is enough evidence to conduct an investigation. And then, if there were, then it would go through the process. They will hand over a file to the prosecutor.
We rule out private suits… in order to prevent such weaponization, if you will, by lawsuits between different political parties or, in fact, by vested interests. So it will only happen if there is enough evidence and if it was in the public interest.
We have some choice points there to, for example, provide an opportunity when someone does say something false, they realize their mistake, there’s a 14-day period [where] They can actually retract and apologize.
And there are exceptions for national security. There are certain circumstances, a fairly narrow set of circumstances, where it may be legitimate to protect collective security for a politician to use misinformation.
So there are reasonable defenses there. But at the heart of it, it’s a very simple principle. It is never, ever, unacceptable for a politician to lie on purpose.
We have a small number of parliaments around the world, around half a dozen, where it is already a criminal offense to lie to parliament. So earlier this year, former Chancellor of Austria, for example, Sebastian Kurz, Found guilty of the same criminal offense of lying to Parliament. The Leader of the Opposition in the Singaporean Parliament is currently Charged with the felony of lying to Parliament. What we still don’t have in the world is… a comprehensive ban on intentional fraud by politicians.
And could it result in jail time, or do you think the fines would be enough?
The punishment we have currently established is actually neither fines nor imprisonment. This is simply disqualification from the position. So if you were a sitting politician, you would be removed from office. If you were a candidate, then you could not stand an election cycle. Our term in our parliament is four years. For a politician this is a very serious sanction, you know, in terms of his reputation, etc. So that’s what we’re aiming for right now. But obviously, you can also look at other criminal sanctions.
You mentioned a moment ago the… the resignation, at this point, of so many people around the world to the possibility, maybe even the likelihood, that politicians are going to lie and lie regularly.
If we look at the example of Donald Trump, in his course [U.S.] presidency, The Washington Post documented that he made 30,573 false or misleading claims. But as you well know, it seems that a great many Americans, including his party, continue to support him. So it’s a complicating factor when the public not only accepts it, but votes for politicians who demonstratively said things that are not true.
I think this example is why we need to pass legislation to make intentional fraud a criminal offence.
Philosopher Hannah Arendt, In some very important articles about lying in politicsHe said that what happens when you accept a political lie is not that the public believes the lies, it’s that they stop believing in the very idea of ​​truth itself.
And I think that’s what happened in kind of early America, is that all politics, then, suffered in terms of public credibility. People begin to believe that all politicians are all the same; They are all liars. And so, it has little effect on Trump’s approval rating because he’s pretty much pricing in this credibility gap, which has grown in politics.
That’s why we need to set this standard, to prevent it in democracies in the future and around the world.
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