Diluting draconian laws……
Re-assuring news for readers of my piece about Rachida Dati’s new bill on keeping certain long-term prisoners locked up for the rest of their days: a legal committee within the Senate has just thrown out the offending paragraphs (which you will remember were added at the last minute as amendments and voted through at 2.30 a.m. to an almost deserted chamber). According to one member of the committee, the version voted “didn’t stand up” (ne tenait debout). I find it staggering that paid representatives vote through laws which lawyers then say “don’t stand up”. Anyway, said a journalist in Les Echos, the text would have been in contradiction with the European Convention on Human Rights – so would have been thrown out by Europe anyway. What caused the fuss, not surprisingly, was the retroactive nature of the proposed law, which would have affected all those already sentenced to long stretches.
The law itself highlights one of the weaknesses of our society. As Les Echos says: “the text was promised this summer by Nicolas Sarkozy following two big news stories and examined en procédure d’urgence.” In other words rushed through as a crowd-pleaser. We inevitably criticise Americans when Washington fails to ban guns after a shooting incident, but our alternative of rushing round trying to pass half-baked laws after every gruesome but not necessarily deep-rooted crime is not much better.
On another level note the phrase “the text was promised by Nicolas Sarkozy”. Are you keeping a list of all those promises unkept? Look on the bright side - watch the final of the Australian open with that truly inspirational Frenchman Jo-Wilfried Tsonga. What’s the betting that Sarkozy flies on from India to Melbourne to be photographed with the Mohammed Ali look-alike? With France’s second bank in tatters, and nobody apparently knowing what to do with the world’s No.1 bank frauder, Sarkozy needs to be seen with France’s 5th-ranked (sic!) tennis-player to boost his image. Sarkozy used to fancy himself as a tennis man - cue photo-opportunity………..