Submitted by Yardbroom
Prime Minister Bruce Golding
“The International Federation For Human Rights (FIDH) welcomed the Caribbean Court Of Justice first death penalty ruling given on Nov 8, 2006, which dismissed an appeal by the Barbados Government seeking to restore execution orders for two convicted murderers. The case was largely perceived as a test case of the new court’s position on the death penalty.”
“The CCJ is the Supreme judicial organ in the Caribbean community and replaces the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council since April 2005.”
The situation has changed since 2006, as this year it was reported that Barbados’ Deputy Prime Minister Freundel Stuart, who is also Attorney General announced that the mandatory death sentence will be abolished in Barbados. “This statement was made after the Inter-American Court of Human Rights had stated that the power to have the death sentence commuted by an executive body as is the current situation, is not the same as having the appropriate punishment determined by a competent court of Law”.
There we have Barbados’ position however an up date of the situation will bring differences and similarities into focus.
On the 26th November 2008, The Associated Press reported that the Jamaican Parliament voted to keep capital punishment by 34 votes for to 15 against.
Although the death penalty has been legal in Jamaica the courts have not used that punishment for almost 20 years. Why did the Jamaica Parliament voted as they did? The vote was against a background of a “soaring crime rate and an increase in crime against children ( including the disturbing cases of a girl who was beheaded and a boy whose body was found cut up in a trash can ) many people have demanded that courts start condemning people to death again”.
The director for Jamaican’s For Justice said: “The island with a population of 3 million people, already has had 1,240 murders so far this year, (2008) coming close to last year’s total of 1,400 in comparison, Chicago, which has a population of 2.8 million had 443 murders in 2007”.
The passing of time has not diminished Prime Minister Golding’s views on the undertaking he gave to the Jamaican people. As recently as July 10, 2009, The Daily News reported that Golding told a town hall meeting that his administration “is prepared to honour the “yes” vote taken by Parliament last year on the capital punishment issue.” He added:
“Once Parliament has taken that position, this government has given a commitment, that we are going to honour it. We are obliged by the resolution of Parliament he said.” I should add that the Jamaican House of Representatives voted to retain hanging, and the Senate did the same a month later.
Before I address the homicide rate for Barbados what is the CARICOM position? It was recently reported: “Trinidad and Tobago has the death penalty for murder. If a murderer has the death penalty, it’s very difficult to reconcile it with someone who committed genocide getting life in prison” argued a legal expert for one Caribbean nation, who spoke on condition of anonymity. He believed that to be a general CARICOM view.”
If that is the case how does that perceived CARICOM view square up with Barbados, Trinidad and Tobago and now Jamaica’s Positions.
What this does highlight is though our backgrounds – CARICOM nations – are similar in most cases, distance and time have allowed us to adopt different cultures and ways of doing things…and dare I say it behaving. What is suitable for Trinidad and Tobago and Jamaica might not be necessarily so for Barbados. The idea that we are in CARICOM and a one size fits all is not possible. I have on purpose avoided mentioning Guyana…I will leave that for others.
The United Nations Survey on Crime Trends Homicides Rate for 2000 were:
- Barbados 7.49 per 100 000 population
- Jamaica 33.69 per 100 000 population
- The only countries with higher rates than Jamaica that year were:
- Swaziland 88.61 per 100 000 population ( In 2003 dropped to 13.05 and 2004 13.65 )
- Columbia 82.74 per 100 000 population.
- South Africa 51 per 100 000 population.
- For 2008 the murder rate in Barbados was 8.2 per 100 000 population.
It is obvious that Jamaica has a major problem with homicides and the Jamaican Prime Minister Bruce Golding seeks to address it the way he, the Jamaican House of Representatives, the Jamaican Senate and the Jamaican majority population think it should be addressed…democracy at work.
Should I or others interfere in the affairs of a sovereign state because it is a CARICOM member? or will that apply to certain issues for specific islands…no doubt there will be the usual silence. I take no position here on this issue, I have just given a factual account.
The Jamaican Parliament voting to retain the death penalty is nothing but political grandstanding.Politicians have no political will when it comes to carrying out the death penalty.All you here is the lame excuse about Pratt and Morgan precedence and all these exhaustive appeals for murderers by the varoius local and international human rights organisation . The caribbaen court of appeal was established to deal with issues like those and yet still only barbados and Guyana are active participants.The jamaican crime rate definately called for drastic measure.
Having said that even though Barbados and Guyana has signed on to the CCJ have we had hangings in these countries?
NO!
Jamaica go’ a problem wid guns and politicians… whoevah responsible fah both is de ones dat wan’ hangin’…
AAAAAAAAAAAAghhhhhhhhhhh
Jamaica would never be bold enough to abolish the death sentence but they would not administer it. It just goes as a threat. Barbados does not belong to the Privy Council anymore but now that they can’t used Prat and Morgan as escuses amymore, they are now trying to find another way out. For me, I would abolisr hanging but retain the death penalty, maybe by injection or some other humane method of removing some criminals from society.
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Capital Punishment. The penalty of death for the commission of a crime is an issue that tends to defy the application of reason. Almost every one has an opinion on the death penalty; however, few have done the necessary study to understand the complexity of the issue.
Civil Law and Justice in Bible Times.
The discussion of any aspect of law in the OT must come, sooner or later; to Leviticus 19, a microcosm of the whole legal priniciple of Scripture.
The testimony of Lev 19 is that, while civil law in the OT is expressed in enactments appropriate to its purposes, it is not distinguished in principle from any of the other commandments of God, domestic, moral, ceremonial, or personal. Lev 19 seems to almost designedly without pattern or structure; it sweeps together into one place rules and directives of evry kind. A principle of kindness (v. 14) lies between one of commercial honesty (v. 13) and integrity in justice (v.15); sexual purity (v. 20), sound husbandry (v. 23), and so on.
Principles of Jurisprudence.
The Lex Talionis; the basic principle of OT jurisprudence was absolute equity, enunciated in the striking and memorable form “an eye for any eye and a tooth for a tooth.” This is often unthinkingly criticized as it is were a license for savagery, but reflection establishes that its intention was to secure as exact an equation as is humanly possible between crimes and punishment.
The law is stated three times. The first statement ( Exod. 21: 23) simply requires that equity must govern all court practice; indeed, words could not make the great principle of equivalence clearer. The second statement ( Lev. 24: 19-20) adds that the rule of equity applies to all alike, alien as well as nativeborn. The third (Deut 19: 19-21) goes further by claiming that this absolutely equal apportionment of justice promotes a wholsome society and acts as an effective deterrent. Far from being a charter for excess, the ‘lex talionis’ guards the rights of the guilty ( who must not be punished beyond their deserts) as much as it maintains the dignity of the law. Far from being a piece of ancient barbarism, it should still apply – and God help the state, ancient or modern, where it does not!
Golding needs to extend the death penalty even further, for even more offences, in Jamaica!! Violence is the only language which Jamaicans understand!!
No politician has the right to order the death penalty, only the Court does. And by the way, David, the CCJ will not depart from Privy Council precedent except where it is incongruent with reason. @ Zoe, should we follow all the law as to punioshment in Leviticus. As I told your alter ego on another thread, we are not a theocracy!
Violence is the only language which Jamaicans understand!!
*************
reminiscent of some species of
The death penalty does NOT deter murder, or any other crime. Statistics from the US where some states have the death penalty and some don’t, show that there is no statistically significant deterrent value to the punishment. About all that can be said is that the recidivism rate is very low! What we get out of the death penalty is a sense of retribution for the population at large, we express our anger at the crime and criminal in question. Our question, then, becomes one of whether we are sufficiently mature as a people to forgo the emotive value of the retribution in favor of logic. If it was wrong for the murderer to take a life, how can it be right for the state to take a life? Statistically, again, most murders are crimes of passion, not coldly calculated. By comparison, the death penalty constitutes singularly the most coldly calculated premeditated murder it is possible to imagine. And we haven’t even begun to consider how many people, world-wide, have been executed when in fact they were innocent, just found guilty by a fallible court.
Hell!! NO.
Barbados should NOT follow Golding’s lead.
TWR
That argument about the innocent being punished is very rare, what is true that many persons use the non-execution factor to commit heinious crimes. I wish that some of you could interact with some of these criminals. There are some people out there that got a demon/s in them and only think or act in a demonic manner, you can’t rehabilitate these people, when they murder execute them, it is in their best interest and also that of society. It may sound hard but it is true.
The crime situation in Jamaica puts Golding in a difficult position. To abolish hanging may demonstrate surrender.
Why on earth not, J??
With a people who’s brains r so myopic, i.e. violence is all they seem to think about, what choice does Golding have? I don’t suppose he enjoys executing his own people but perceives a requirement for doing so! Just yesterday, on my way home there was a crowd and I turned back just in time to see a Jamaican woman with half a brick in her hand about to, or having just murdered somebody and it’s not the first time I’ve observed such an incident and that’s here in the UK, then how much more in Jamaica!
It makes no sense arguing for an abolition of hanging. The legal constraints pretty much mean that even tho hanging has not been abolished, it’s near impossible to carry out!
Dat bway or gal 199 mess up fihim ed wi Jumakan, hnn. Evry blessed day de same ol song. Yu soun like yu is sum kinna freak. Wha rong wid yu? Yu cyan see nuttin but Jumakan? Yu cyan see no crime but is Jumakan do it. Wha’ppen you get jakit? Sum body tief you squeeze?
Scout @ July 15, 3.35pm
I agree with you 100%+.
The naysayers use the argument of executing someone wrongfully as a red herring.
If this were rampant, the whole judicial system would need seriously overhauling; indeed, it would lack credibility.
Have you noticed there is is a growing spiral in people who served time for murder, commiting the act a second time?
The punishment must fit the crime.My support of capital punishment has nothing to do with wether capital punishment serves as a detterant but rather that society needs a system to dispose of the most vile and murdurous among us.Tired of the pro-murderers using the same old notion about reasearch do not show a inverse correlation between the death penalty and crime.Generally all those researches are still inconclusive.Research shows that alcohol and cigarettes are bad for our health but yet still individuals choose to indulge and also provide a great source of revenue for governments. Crucial decision of national importance taken by the political directorate on behalf
belhalf of its citizenry should be informed,consultative ,practical and logical.Singapore is a test case in point .Crime in Jamaica has been relatively high per capita as far back as the 1970,s.The muder rate in 1980 was over 800.It average about low 500 in the 1980,s .It then start a rapid rise in the 1990,s up until today with the advent of the cocaine trade, gun trade coupled with the deportee phenomena.
80% of the Jamaican population suppport the dealth penalty.It is not mandatory but only resevered for capital murderers . Major causes of crime in Jamacica: 1.Failure of government to carry out the death penalty(provide incentives for criminal)
2:Criminals have a 70% chance of not being caught and convicted.The clear up rate for homicidal crime is 30%.
3.Easy access to guns from north america.
4:Gang turf war over drugs/guns and scarce resources
5: Too many unplanned communities.(Too much squatting) 25% of the population lived in unplanned settlements.
While the issue of crime and the death penalty I would assume is not a urgent matter in Barbados, the Jamaica situation warrants an urgent and extreme solutions and the death penalty is definately one.
Prime Minister Golding need to show resolve. First he needs to abandon the privy council and sign on to the CCJ through a referendum or a parliamentary majority.Second he needs to withdraw from some of these international pro -criminal organisation masquerading under the rubic of HUMAN RIGHTS whose main pupose is to delay and prolong the appeal process of these murderers so as to commute their sentences .Listen to the people.80% support capital punishment in whatever form it may take, be it hanging or lethal injection.
Although the former PM of Trinidad Mr basdeo Panday can be a very devisive and autocratic figure I will always admire his stance against pressure from these so called human right organisation stay of execution-concerning the murdurous Dole Chadee and company.Mr Pandy execute all the convicts over a three day period. If I am not correct I think it was about 8-11 people.
‘Rahtid’, the figures speak for themselves! 1500 murders in Jamaica, last year alone, not to mention the other countries which your people live in! I’m just not blind like the majority of other people, or prefer not to see!
As you’ve irritated me on this subject I’ll give u some more information, not that I expect it to make a jot of difference to the ‘blind’ Bajans, where Jamaicans are concerned!! Here’s a piece by another Barbadian whose experience during his youth is a virtual mirror-reflection of mine, and not even in the same country!!:
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For the record, I grew up among Jamaicans. I love their vibrancy, and can do it spirit. Every Jamaican thinks s(he) is a star. And why not? But violent temper and willingness to throw reason overboard at the slightest whim a very very big problem. I have never met a people so quick to call upon violence or kill for nothing. My first experiences with Jamaicans when I moved to the States in the 80’s as a young boy was absolutely shocking. Every conversation was about violence, speaking of and exalting criminals and murderers with levels of admiration that truly had me awestruck. And this continues today. Even well mannered, well educated Jamaicans I knew were less so but still they too seemed to have a tacit admiration for gunmen and the violent aspects of Jamaican and Jamaicans, etc!!
********
A mad lot of people!!
zion1971’The caribbean court of appeal was established to deal with issues like those’
Quite a statement, that has been refuted by the legal authorities, basing the creation of the Court on the Caribbean being able to generally determine its own destiny, I thought.
I also suspected at the time, due to the haste involved, that this was one reason, but realised, as does Themis, that such a reason is irrelevant and
any expressed ‘intention’ to hang will come to nought.
Themis is on the ball here.
Despite the Dole Chadee situation, which was ‘successful’ only because of swift execution by Government (no pun intended), I think that we are wasting ink.
I do agree that there are some incorrigible creatures out there, that have little use for life.
But, do you really expect that we can fly in the face of established practice under international conventions, at the risk of becoming labelled a rogue state?
Peace
In addition, aside from the truly ferocious minority, where does a high crime rate derive, but from social conditions, poverty and warped ‘norms’?
Can we not also deal with these from a young age, can we not address social injustice and change the way that people think, generally?
This might sound, pie-in-the-sky, but unfortunate reality is that using a band-aid to deal with ganrene is fairly useless.
We have to address social norms and behaviours, we have to address poverty, education, spiritual understanding and enlightenment, otherwise we waste effort.
What will be do in ten or twenty years, when social conditions have deteriorated further to send the crime even higher, have ‘Saturday executions’ to hang all the perpetrators?
Surely addressing the underlying cause could possibly be a more effective way to adress issues.
Or, are ‘Saturday executions’, inevitable?
Will we cycle around to pre-Victorian practice?
Peace
Rumpelstilskin
I agree with you on some of the points of wanton social conditions that predispose an individual to a recidivistic life of crime. However, that is just part of the problem.Most homicidal urbanized crime in most countries do not occur during robbery or burgarly but rather are committed by oraganised /unorganised gangs fighting over turf or settling personal vendettas. A lot of these crime have nothing to do with poverty whatsoever wether in the relative or obsolute sense of the word.For me personally I think using poverty as an excuse for criminal behaviour is heights of intellectual dishonesty.Another point , must I remind you that the USA has no less than 20 states that retain the death penalty.Texas is number one when it comes to the death penalty.Texas has executed more people in the last 20 years than most Caricom nation put together in their whole years has independent states.Yet no one classified the USA as a pariah or rogue states.while it is important to have some common interanational law ,a one -size- fit all jurisprudence (especially with issues of the death penalty) is a misguided notion.So while the enlighten and post-victorian society may look at us as barbaric and uncivilised that should not caused us much concern. And remember let us not forget that it is these same learned and enlighten class that have led humanity into wars upon wars even to this day.
I strongly believe that this attitude of “valuing all life” must be rejected. At a minimum a person should not be a burden, a nuisance or a threat to the wider society. This idea that all anti-social or destructive behaviour is in response to social inequity is not borne out by review of the lives of those that kill and corrode the quality of life of others.
Up and on Zion1971! Well said.
@ Zoe
It’s not really a good idea to cite Leviticus as a solid legal precedent for anything.
After all, Leviticus not only endorses slavery, it also gives rules on how slave-owners should act (Chapter 25).
It’s also extremely detailed (basically, all of the first seven chapters) on the rules for animal sacrifice.
And it’s obsessed with “purity”. A menstruating woman is “impure” for a week, and if you even touch a chair she sat on you’re impure for a day (Chapter 15).
More importantly, Leviticus stipulates execution for adultery (Chapter 20). If we took that as a guide to jurisprudence in Barbados, we’d be hanging people just about every day of the week—except the Sabbath, of course, because Leviticus demands the death penalty for anyone who violates the Sabbath. So all those people shopping at Supercentre at the weekend could kiss goodbye to their pensions and get ready for execution.
One thing I really like about Leviticus: Chapter 19. You have to be nice to deaf people. I’m with Lev on that one. Otherwise, it’s garbage.
A lot of these crime have nothing to do with poverty whatsoever wether in the relative or obsolute sense of the word.For me personally I think using poverty as an excuse for criminal behaviour is heights of intellectual dishonesty.
*************
Well said, Zion. A shaft of Barbadian-intelligence for a change!! Apologists are the subversives of the age!!
Having had a cursory look at:
The Privy Council Appeal No 10 of 1993
(1) Earl Pratt and
(2) Ivan Morgan appellants
v
(1) The Attorney General for Jamaica and
(2) The Superintendent of Prisons Saint Catherine’s Jamaica, respondents
With reference to paragraph 101.
I believe it is still possible to hang convicted murderers in Jamaica. A problem only arises when the time frome sentence to execution is more than five years – the inhuman factor then intercedes – as was the situation in the Pratt and Morgan case…that is my reading of the Judgement, obviously subject to correction.
Honestly…
If you have a law, USE IT!
If not, GET RID OF IT!
Plain & Simple! Stop wasting the taxpayers’ money! WE are the ones working hard and staying on the right side of the law…EVERYONE can do that! Why should we pander to those who don’t want to?
@Bowman, As Leviticus 19 says, I will try and be ‘nice’ to you a spiritually ‘deaf’ person, as you don’t have a clue how to ‘rightly divide’ God’s Word, either in its historical, cultural, or theological context, hence, in your blinded ‘ignorance’ refer to it as garbage!
Yardbroom, I do believe that your assessment is correct, the lengthy stay in prison then amounts to cruel and inhuman punishment, if the ‘stated’ five years is reached.
I think that this was how T&T got around Pratt & Morgan, in the Dole Chadee case.
Produce swift and efficient prosecution case and case scheduling, eliminate lengthy delays caused by attorneys for the defense and you may have a go, I think anyway.
Turning back to the point on the socio-economic factors.
Surely I agree that the case of Mexico highlights a criminal and gang created warfare that results in a severe incidence of deaths.
Nevertheless, what causes these, greed for some but survival for others.
The ‘barons’ seek money over money i.e. greed, while the footsoldiers seek money for survival.
Is there a difference, maybe.
I too abhor the crime i.e. drugs, that destroy so many lives.
Nevertheless, what causes the success of barons and maintains the black market?
Money and survival, together with a product that hooks the buyers.
It is a social scenario, that must be handled before the crime i.e. murders.
How to eliminate the trade, that results in deaths?
Big question obviously, but surely hanging one person or even ten, will not get rid of the trade nor murders?
I am not apologising, merely playing devil’s advocate.
Note that I too agree that there are a select minority who are insanely brutal and sick, but can you apply this to the majority?
Will you generalise, at the risk of ignoring the underlying realities that could in fact address much problems?
Peace
Zoe, I ask you again, why should we, still a secular society be governed by the concepts of Leviticus? Why not adopt Sharia law then? And you have not answered Jack Bowman that we would have a most barbaric society if we should follow Leviticus! Spare me the thesis in reply, please.
Yard broom your interpretation is indeed quiet right.
zion1971,
I was away for a couple days. You’ve made some very solid and sensible comments above.
By the way, my gut feeling about the Dole Chady/Panday matter is that Panday did not want to take any chances with that murderous bunch.
With his minister Selwin (can’t remember the last name; I think it’s Richardson) being gunned down execution-style, Panday was not about to take any chances with his life.
To those who are in favour of abolishing the death penalty, please be honest in your postulations.
Kindly note that the death penalty was not instituted as a deterrent to murder; it is there as PUNISHMENT FOR THE CRIME OF MURDER!
The by product of the death penalty would tend to make potential murderers think twice, and as a result, lead to a deterrent in the crime of murder.
Themis, the majority of Barbadians, are NOT secularist; therefore, you cannot impose YOUR secularist mindset on everyone else!
As Facts correctly stated:
“Kindly note that the death penalty was NOT instituted as a deterrent to murder, it is there as PUNISHMENT FOR THE CRIME OF MURDER!”
Our shared morality, throughout the history mankind, is “self-evident” thus, the rule of voluntary agents on earth in the sentence that ‘reason’ gives concerning the goodness of those things which they are to do. Thus, reason discovers in nature the laws God has promulgated and all people know them to be right.
Civil, criminal, and most of our other laws, governing our society, for the good justice of all, find there genesis in the Word of God, the Bible, not a ‘godless’ secular mindset!
@ Zoe,
I do not care what the majority of Barbadians are or say they are. The Constitution declares them to be secularist! And you know the last part of your contribution is absolute nonsense. These laws preceded the Word of God.
FACTS
I coulnot agree with you more
@Themis, If any man be ignorant, let him remain ignorant, the choice is yours!
So it be!
Zoe,
we know that you made your choice to remain ignorant but why seek to have Themis join you?
Themis, where in the constitution of B’dos, does it refer to the majority of Barbadians as ‘secularist’?
Secondly, why then does one take the ‘Bible’ the Word of God, and swear on it in taking oaths, etc?
Secularism, Secular Humanism.
A way of life and thought that is pursued without reference to God or religion. The Latin root ‘saeculum’ referred to a generation or an age. ‘Secular’ came to mean “belonging to this age” wordly, it is a world view and life style oriented to the profane, (Godless) rather than the sacred.
Historically, “secularization” first referred to the process of transferring property from ecclesastical jurisdiction to that of the state or other nonecclesiastical authority.
Secularization is to be understood as a shift in ways of thinking and living, away from God and toward the worldly. Renaissance humanism, Englightenment rationalism, the rising power and influence of science, the breakdown of traditional structures ( e.g., the family, the church, the neighborhood), the technicization of society, and the competition offered by nationalisn, evolutionism, and Marxism have all contributed to what Max Weber termed the “disenchantment” of the modern world.
Secularization, is itself, a fact of history and a mixed blessing. However, ‘Secularism’ as a comprehensive philosophy of life expresses an unqualifed enthusiasm for the process of ‘secularization’ in all spheres of life.
Secularism, is fatally flawed by its reductionist view of reality, denying and exculding Almighty God and the supernatural in a myopic fixation on the immanent and the natural. In contemporary discussion, secularism and humanism are often seen in tandem as secular humanism, an approach to life and thought, individual and society, which glorifies the creature, and rejects the Creator; it is an entirely ‘godless’ approach to life.
Whose values should be reflected in our Law and Public Policy?
The traditional answers from Judeo-Christian history, philosophy, and theology are often dismissed without a hearing, and our ‘heritage’ including the ‘Moral Roots’ of our ‘Legal’ and political sysytems is being exchanged for the views that the so-called enlightened secularists offer in its place.
While the Biblical values may not, ‘ipso facto’ be appropriate for legislation, across the board, there are numerous instances in which these ancient traditions do offer the best alternatives for public affirmation, as Lutheran theologian Richard John Neuhaus has written:
“It was thought until very recently, by the cultural leadership of the Western world, that (the source of public values) had been resolved…by excluding religion or religious-based morality from the public arena…The idea of the separation of church and State…has by remarkable convolution of logic and Law, come to mean in the minds of many people the separation of religiously based values from public policy. But, the period is now past when it was assumed that these issues could be resolved by simply removing one side of the debate from the public square…We are not talking about imposing a belief system, BUT, rather, about RESISTING the imposition of ‘Alien’ belief systems, that IMPOSE themselves under the guise of being ‘value-neutral’ and ‘value-free’, when in fact they are laden with ALL kinds of values which are ‘Alien’ to the beliefs, the dreams, the (very) convictions of the American people, ( and I dare say Barbadians as well!).
A secuIar state is one where church and government are two different entities, Iike ItaIy where the Pope does not make the Iaws nor does he enforce them, in a IargeIy CathoIic country, or Turkey which though mainIy MusIim is not governed by Imams but by the democraticaIIy eIected goverment and unIike Iran, where we have seen recentIy that the peopIe may want one thing but the “church” ruIes. We have a IegaI system based on EngIish Common Iaw, the Iaw of precedent which though infIuenced by Christianity originaIIy is not dictated by bibIicaI ruIes, unIike the horrendous sharia Iaw which uses the Koran as the be aII and its priests to ruIe. We don’t have to swear on the bibIe in court if we don’t want to, we have the right to choose what to swear by and our word is taken seriousIy when we give it, without resorting to God or gods and uItimateIy the peopIe ruIe, via the jury system and the eIectorate. The peopIe decide, not God, whether we are teIIing the truth or not. Yay!
@Thanatos,
I only just saw your question…it is section 19 of the Constitution.
Truth, by definition is absolute, regardless of who denies it, truth is the ultimate certitude.
No matter how vigorously we attempt to hide from truth, it always finds a way to survive, and deliver its consequences. And the consequences can be severe; the greater the repression of truth, and the longer the period of time over which the repression takes place, the graver the ultimate consequences.
“And many will follow their ‘destructive’ ways, because of whom the way of ‘truth’ will be blasphemed. By covetousness they will exploit you with deceptive words; for a long time their judgment has not been idle, and their destruction does not slumber. ( 2 Peter 2: 2,3).
“And you shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free.” (John 8:32).
“To say of what is, that it is; or of what is not, that it is not, is true.” Aristotle.
Is that by any chance an answer to my post?
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