Abusing power and authority : Short arms of the law
- The Sangai Express Editorial :: October 03, 2012 -

Abuse of power. Or demeaning the official position that one holds.

To be sure the buck will stop at the marching orders served on the 180 contract employees who were appointed at the State Assembly by flouting the directives of the Supreme Court, while those who enjoyed the position to appoint them in the first place would go scot free.

In a sense a travesty of justice. This has been more or less the same in every case, where the big fishes have always been given the long rope and the understanding of the law catching up seems to apply only to the small players.

Selective justice may be even worse than no justice at all. The hand of the law is obviously too short for the power players.

Rare or even unheard of is the case when big players are netted in any graft case, as far as the situation in Manipur goes.

That it took the office of the Governor, otherwise not much more than the nominal head of the State, to write to the Assembly Secretariat to inquire whether advertisements for the said posts were published or not is saying something a lot.

It is more than a case of a handful of appointments being effected by side stepping the laid down procedures, but speaks volumes about how people in positions of power have been circumventing the rules and regulations to serve their immediate interests.

A fitting example of how power is wielded without responsibility. Mastering the art of scripting a yarn that is Manipur today.

Corruption is the edifice on which rests all such unscrupulous and fraudulent appointments. And in Manipur there are numerous such cases.

Everyone knows it, though it may be hard to proof as the trail of corruption can be manipulated, distorted and covered up by those occupying positions of power and authority.

It is a vicious cycle, wherein those who had to pay through their nose to get the plum appointment will feel it their bounden duty to recover the 'investment' made.

So it goes on. Corruption not only breeds incompetency and lethargy but also arrogance and spawns a culture where cocking a snook at the law is taken as a status statement.

This is what Manipur has been witnessing all these years and little wonder then that it figures nowhere in the list of the States which are moving with the need of the time.

It is also a sure shot formula to sow seeds of social unrest for any backdoor appointment means taking away the opportunity of a more deserving candidate.

A skewed value system is the logical outcome of such a culture and this can be seen prominently in the emergence of false heroes, where those with the maximum nuisance value are accorded important social and official positions.

The over-staffed State Assembly is a clear reflection of the joke that is Manipur today.