Winston Peters - Mob injustice nullifies law

Much of 20th-century history concerned world wars and the struggle between two super powers, the Soviet Union and the United States.
It ended with the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rebirth or birth in former communist countries of democracy and the rule of law.
For much of that period, Western nations sought to demonstrate the difference between their societies and those of dictatorships or one-party states. Among their many benefits, the West argued, was that they believed in innocence until proven guilt was proven, the opposite of their opponents.
With the collapse of the Soviet Union many of the beliefs of Western society have diminished, for without a real opponent in the super-power stakes there is less need to provide evidence of some cherished benefits of democracy.
In the last two decades, we've witnessed all manner of challenges to once-treasured principles and the quality of justice is one of them.
Apparently we now no longer believe in having all the facts. Now so often we witness a headlong rush to judgment with the devil taking the hindmost. If some get stampeded in the process, then so what?
Of recent examples, Darren Hughes is just the latest. Let's be clear. Few if any of us have any idea of the details behind the police receiving a complaint involving the MP. But the media have had a field day with rumour, innuendo, suspicion and allegations.
Two recent parliamentary events involving ministers are cases in point. They involved allegations, resulting in ministers standing down, which upon proper inquiry were found to be baseless. But that did not stop the mob behaviour central to this farce within a democracy.
Dover Samuels lost his ministerial post over allegations which proved groundless, but when it was over he was never the same man again. His leader said he had to go while charges "were swirling around him".
Mr Samuels was exonerated and, to the best of my knowledge, has never received an apology from anyone.
And then David Parker faced allegations of business impropriety. Mr Parker stood down. There was no evidence to back up the allegations but that seemingly did not matter. The blood sport of politics had one more day at the coliseum.
But for a bizarre twist, the Parker saga would have died along with his career. Except Mr Parker was telling the truth, as some of us who defended him back then argued to no avail. The critical evidence lay in a document which required filing with the Companies Office.
Under our law, the Companies Office is required to keep copies of such documents for seven years.
In the Parker case, for reasons probably to do with pressures of work, the Companies Office had still not, after nine years, destroyed the document. As fate would have it, the document was found, proving that Mr Parker had told the truth all along.
Not one sentence in the press has ever offered him an apology.
Who cares? We should. Why? Because this is the environment not of a free, democratic, worthy society but rather of one which humanity has struggled against for thousands of years.
We've reached a tipping point where facts, evidence and truth is of no moment, and politics has become the venal and crude practice of who gets what, when, where, why and how.
When the headlines began on Mr Hughes, some commentators covered their derrieres with the proviso "even if what happened was not illegal it was immoral".
On what facts was that based? This is like a Labrador salivating before gobbling up its meal, plus the bag of dog biscuits the owner has mislaid.
Or like the line from the pop group Queen: "I want it all and I want it now."
Surely we should wait for the police to complete their investigations. And then there is the matter of Phil Goff's handling of the issue, which this article neither defends nor criticises because we simply do not have the facts. Save one comment: believing in the principle of innocence before proven guilt is a fundamental tenet of our society - or used to be. Waiting to hear from the police was a sound decision.
That said, Mr Hughes should have stood aside from his responsibilities. Whatever Mr Goff's initial decision, he should have stuck to it regardless of pressure.
Two more recent cases involved Richard Worth and Pansy Wong. Mr Worth protested his innocence and resigned from Parliament, which means the rest of us still have no idea what the facts were. Mrs Wong did likewise but there is a lot in that case that New Zealanders really needed to know and, in the short term, never will.
So much about politics resembles African wildlife. A lion streaks out from the long grass. The herd of MPs stampede. The moment the lion makes the kill, the herd slams on the brakes and resumes grazing. "I'm all right, Jack."
If equality before the law is something worth fighting for, then it has taken a real hit in the last two weeks. The corrosion of this principle might today have cost Mr Hughes but some day ordinary citizens will collectively pay the price for it.
They'll become the victims of allegations without proof of wrong-doing. As John Donne warned: "Ask not for whom the bell tolls. It tolls for thee."