PAGE 4
PARLIAMENTARY FORUM FOR DEMOCRACY NEWS
with the guillotines, up and down, chopping down hundreds if not thousands of heads. I mention this because Joseph Fuché was somewhat left from Robespierre, he was the butcher of Lyon, and survived the whole disaster that makes me think that revolution can never be completed, but it can certainly cause tremendous injustice as we so often saw in history.- My last point is Ben Ali himself, who, when he ousted President Bourguiba and made a coup d ‟ état in October 1987, and I would like to remind you that Ben Ali did this in a conviction that it helps Tunisia and he introduced democratic reforms. Later, he slowly slipped toward dictatorship, which makes me say very clearly that it does not matter whether politicians, especially country leaders act in good faith or not. Most of them act in good faith, exceptions exist but they are in a minority. I worry even Lenin, Stalin and Hitler believed that they are doing the right things. If you want to prevent leaders become dictators, rule of law is and institutions are the most important. My conclusion is, that transitional justice legally does not exist. Or should not exist: rule of law should prevail. Political aspects Transitional justice has a political aspect, not only legal one. People – it is rather understandable – do not want to see old regime loyalists in influential positions. How can it be achieved? In many countries laws the electoral codes( or any other laws) may exclude former regime loyalists from participating in the new democratic leadership. There are attempts or endeavours even to ban their parties. Again, I understand these feelings, I do understand these attempts, but an advocatus diaboli, I would rather argue against.- Banning their political parties will do not mean that they will give up with political activities, but rather it will mean that they will go underground. If they are permitted to do politics legally, you can see and hear what they want to achieve, what tools they are planning to use. If they are underground, they will disappear from public control. You will need intelligence to follow them and their activities, and should they become stronger, you will have to increase the pressure. Will you put their political leaders in jail for being active in a political party? What will be the difference between you and the oppressive regime you just left behind?- I think that many former regime loyalists participated in the previous regime because of personal weakness, individual benefits. Apart from those who committed crimes, so deserve to go to jail, many of them would like to become loyal to the new regime as well( they want to be loyal to any regime, in fact), and they can be won as ally. Not an ally to your party, but an ally to the system, to democracy. In order to achieve this, they must be accepted as part of the political community even you rightly disagree with them.- In my country, the successors of the former communist party remained a legal party and they were terribly defeated in the first free