‘THE POLITICIANS thought that Iceland was like the Titanic – unsinkable,” pensioner Arni Einarsson told Reuters on Monday, using the topical metaphor that in recent days has become as debased as the Icelandic króna in 2008. His point, however, was to explain away the acquittal of the country’s former conservative prime minister, Geir Haarde, on all but one of the charges he faced in connection with the collapse that year of the booming Icelandic banking system. A fool’s pardon . . .
Haarde, the first politician globally to be charged with responsibility for the crash, was found guilty of the minor charge of failing to keep his cabinet informed of major developments during the financial crisis. But he was cleared of three more serious charges of negligence, will not face punishment, and had his costs awarded to him by the court. If convicted of the most serious offences he could have faced two years in jail.
Outside the court he was dismissive, almost contemptuous, of the judges’ ruling which he described as “very laughable” and “silly”. He has accused the court of placating the now Social Democrat-led parliament with the single guilty verdict, reiterated his long-standing contention that the case was a political vendetta, and insisted that no one in the government at the time had realised that the banks, which had grown too much and too fast, posed a threat to the economy.
Haarde has a point. Despite an understandable desire on the part of much of the public to find and punish scapegoats, the idea of what critics of the case have called “criminalising incompetence or ignorance” – as opposed to outright corruption – by jailing politicians has a distinctly undemocratic quality to it. Punishing politicians in the appropriate way is what elections are supposed to be about. Cynics would say the jails would fill up pretty quickly – and surely the voter must have the right to be wrong, the right to elect fools and incompetents? Therein lies the inherent inefficiency of democracy, the frustrating price we pay for freedom.
And the Icelandic system has a particularly political, and so dangerously partisan, “victor’s justice” quality to it – the prosecution is brought by parliament, the Althing, itself on the basis of special 1905 laws for prosecuting officials. As Haarde pointed out regularly, no former Social Democrat ministers were indicted.
But if the criminal prosecution of incompetent politicians is not appropriate, we badly need electorates, in Ireland no less than Iceland, with long memories.