Admission of a mistake, not confession of a crime

by Maswood Alam Khan
January 26, 2011

http://www.weeklyblitz.net/1242/admission-of-a-mistake-not-confession-of-a-crime

Last Friday, finance minister Abul Maal Abdul Muhith admitted that he along with the share market regulators had made some mistakes in handling the market and said that he would be meeting the stakeholders. Did Mr. Muhith make a blunder by delivering such a statement? Does this admission mean that he did confess a crime? Even if his candid admission is construed as a confession of committing a blunder, does such a confession make him liable for all the plights the shareholders have now been suffering? Absolutely not!

I am really surprised hearing that a very important personality who I always revere for his oceanic depth of knowledge about the legal world remarked that the finance minister and the officials of the stock market and the regulatory body should resign as the finance minister himself admitted his and the regulators' mistakes in handling the market.

Maybe the learned personality did make his demand of the finance minister's resignation for some political purposes and I am sure he also knew well what Mr. Muhith did actually mean by his admission of mistakes.

After such a demand made by a lawyer is published in the media general people may quite obviously take the admission of mistake by a finance minister as a confession of a telltale crime. And it may not be a surprise if any of the investors may now claim through court of law compensation from the finance minister and the regulators to make good of his or her loss in the volatile share market on the plea that the finance minister himself admitted his mistake.

We have a tendency always to interpret a saying in its negative perspective and an incident in its darkest color. We enjoy viewing only the black shade of a 'black & white' photograph and making a cartoon of it without presenting the photograph itself and the readers and viewers also dance looking at the cartoon without having to dig dip into the true story.

I remember two news reports and the tumultuous reactions about two statements made by two former ministers: one was finance minister and the other was home minister. The former finance minister, an excellent personality of character, integrity and wisdom, said: "People should take vegetables like cauliflowers, cabbages instead of taking too much carbohydrate like rice". And the former home minister on hearing the death of a child in a shooting said: "Allah has taken the baby away; it was His wish!" Did the finance minister mean that the government would not do anything about escalating price of rice? Did the home minister mean that no action would be taken against the criminal who did kill the baby?

As to Finance Minister Mr. Muhith's admission of his and his colleagues' mistakes, we should evaluate the spirit of his saying so. A confession, in criminal law, is a voluntary statement made by a person charged with the commission of a crime or misdemeanor wherein s/he acknowledges himself/herself guilty of the offense charged. Even a confessional statement by a person is not a confession of a crime unless s/he admits that s/he committed a crime specifying time, date and location of the crime and the specific instruments s/he used or signed on knowing full well about the inevitable outcome of his or her commission of a crime.

The Finance Minister by saying that it was his mistake rather showed his magnanimity. He did never advise the people to invest all their savings to plunk down in the share market without self-judgment, did he? Neither did he ask his subordinates to do something that would trigger the unthinkable volatility of the market. He is a policy maker. And we have to see whether sitting in his chair he could foresee the outcome of a decision that triggered the crisis. If there were a lacuna in the policy-making, that may or could be corrected after or before the crisis.

I would not blame the policy makers for a lacuna in their policy if they did not foresee that people would behave crazily in future out of their insatiable greed to make money overnight. Yes, now that it has been proven that our people are genetically hyperemotional and smells of quick money make our mouths water the policy makers may now sit and think about enforcing some strictures like imposing the limit of money one, given his or her background and financial capacity, can invest in shares just as a welfare measure though such governing stricture does not go with the spirit of the free market. But to leash back the emotional investors what else the government could do? We should not hesitate to take some stern measures that may even be an infringement of people's financial liberty.

The present finance minister is an elderly personality and he has a nice style of delivering his speech that influences the audience. So was the former finance minister, who suggested us to take cauliflowers profusely, who had an avuncular style while he would deliver a speech or speak to journalists. The former home minister who termed the death of a child as the wish of the Providence was also elegiac in his style. We should learn how to honor these elderly people who serve the nation at their twilight years. We must empathize with their situations, their age, their predicaments while criticizing any of their behavioral aspects or of their gaffes.

We should remember that not any Tom, Dick or Harry has the rare quality to shoulder the responsibility of mistakes committed by his people. In this age shallow rivalry on petty matters most politicians do not like to admit mistakes. They see it as a sign of weakness. Only one who has the quality of true leadership shields his men and puts them out of harm's way and boldly comes forward to bow his head to admit a mistake though in no way it was his own mistake.

Only great people admit mistakes. American President Barack Obama publicly admitted making a mistake only two weeks after taking power while saying "I screwed up" in pushing ahead with Tom Daschle as U.S. health care chief. American Presidents, and for that matter presidents or ministers of any country, rarely admit errors because they think they're always right. President Barack Obama perhaps drew inspiration from two of his predecessors who showed the gold value of admitting mistakes. One was John F Kennedy whose 1961 acceptance of responsibility over the bungled Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba was welcomed by Americans, as was Ronald Reagan's 1987 acknowledgment that "serious mistakes were made" in the Iran-contra affair.

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