Morality and the Law
Editorial
Kaieteur News
January 17, 2007
Two bits of legislation before us – the proposal by the government to allow casino gambling at some select venues, which has been sent to a Parliamentary select committee and the Value Added Tax (VAT) which has already been enacted have caused quite a furor in the society.
While the casino gambling bill has raised the issue of the connection between the laws enacted by a government and morality, we believe that the VAT also raises that nexus – albeit from a different perspective.
While it has been said that a Government cannot legislate morality it must be conceded that almost all laws that affect or are touched by the behaviour of citizens do raise questions of morality.
The law, after all, tells us what we ought to do and morality pronounces on the rightness or wrongness of those actions. What the saying implies is that if the morality of the people is set in a particular mould, it is difficult or maybe impossible for a government to change the behaviour of the people through the mere enactment of laws.
Those laws will only be observed in the breach at best or will be openly flouted at worst as the people continue to do what they think is “right”. Governments, then, if they want to maintain the integrity of the laws of the state – and their own legitimacy – would be wise to take into cognisance the state of public morality on issues that come before their legislatures.
Let us take the issue of casino gambling: it should surprise no one that questions have been raised on the moral propriety of this bill. We are said to be a religious people and all the major religions have a negative position on the “evils” of gambling.
Hindus, for instance, are educated to the dangers of gambling in their great epic, Mahabharata, through the story of the virtuous Yuddhistir who is tempted into gambling and plunges his family into what would eventually descend into a great fratricidal war. The proper question before us, therefore, is what is the state of public morality on the issue of gambling? Are we as “religious” as we are purported to be?
Some suggest not. They point to the fact that Lotto, which is a form of gambling, was accepted with nary a squeak of protest, excepting by ROAR, which obviously did not then or now represent the great mass of the people. Lotto is now practised – especially by the poor – far and wide in our fair land.
But the acceptance of Lotto does not necessarily clinch the case for casino gambling. Moral questions, after all, are never completely black and white – there are always various shades of gray.
“Thou shall not steal” we are commanded. But surely we excuse those who steal a dunks or two that hang over our fence. Maybe Lotto is considered as “innocuous” gambling?
Those who oppose casino gambling point out that firstly, the gambling is literally for far greater stakes than Lotto: surely no one has gone broke playing Lotto. Blackjack and other casino gambling, however, are of a different league altogether.
Last, but not least, the activity draws around it a whole syndrome of morally dubious acts if we are to go by the US models: prostitution, alcohol, drugs, enforcers and money laundering. We have to decide whether these possibilities are morally acceptable to most of our people.
There is, of course, the riposte that each of these activities does already occur – but then do we want to facilitate them? We accept alcohol even though there is some moral opprobrium to its use, but we did draw the legal line on marijuana and cocaine. Then there is the VAT, which presents the converse of the moral question that gambling presents. In theory VAT was morally positive – its replacement of the generally higher consumption tax should have encouraged citizens to comply, thus granting the state greater revenues to improve the common good. The implementation of the programme, however, went against the average business morality: losing money on stock bought at the old rates before December 2006 violated that morality. And so we ought not to be surprised when businesses played fast and loose with VAT when “old' stocks were involved.
Morality and the law are intertwined; let us proceed with caution in our Parliament.