Dialogue: Safe on the high ground for once

By JOHN GARDNER

Accusing a politician of taking the moral high ground is one of the magic bullets of public life. It can't miss. Like accusations of sexism, elitism or cultural insensitivity, any attempts at denial or justification serve only to confirm the offence.

The charge is particularly deadly because of the widespread view that politicians are, by definition, amoral and thus cannot make a stand on principle on anything.

So in the fall-out of the George Speight affair, New Zealand's attitude to developments in Fiji has been challenged as an unholy mixture of hypocrisy, preaching, cultural ignorance and, we mustn't forget, neocolonialism.

But the fact that we are quieter in our condemnation of similar wrongdoing by more powerful players doesn't mean that the attack on Speight should not be made. No amount of prattling about the "the Fiji way" should disguise the truth that, in this case, New Zealand is completely right.

If, as Speight suggests, it is proper in Fijian conditions to disenfranchise a group of the population on ethnic grounds and that Fijian culture accepts the assumption of political power through hostage-taking, then that culture is deeply flawed.

Cultural sensitivity may be a virtue and if it enables, for example, the better delivery of health and education services to Maori and Pacific Islanders it needs no defending.

But the idea that all values are sanctified if they are part of a culture, preferably one described as indigenous, is nonsense.

Showing an understanding of other cultures does not require abandoning judgment.

No amount of justification on traditional grounds can justify, say, female genital mutilation. The tribal way of the Ik people was to abandon old people to starve. At the risk of upsetting our Ik readers, that practice is plainly reprehensible. In many cultures, bribery and corruption among public officials is deeply entrenched but it should still be condemned as destructive of civic virtue.

The failure of some immigrant communities to cooperate with the police in criminal investigations may be understandable, but the attitude should still be challenged.

This is not to suggest that Western values and Western culture must prevail. They are as questionable as any.

Democratic representation of the will of the people does not have to follow the Westminster model. More informal methods of sounding opinions and reflecting them in government may well be appropriate in some societies, although no political structure in which people are voiceless, as Speight would render Indo-Fijians, can be defensible.

Tribal cultures are appalled by the tendency of Western societies to turn caregiving into an institutional matter. The mechanical nature of some Western judicial proceedings horrifies societies that place individual and family knowledge at the heart of their crime and punishment regimes.

So it can be seen as presumptuous to point the finger and this overscrupulous fear of appearing to impose alien beliefs extends beyond the political.

But all values systems are not equal. Traditional cosmologies may have great symbolic truth but, in fact, the Earth is not flat and the Sun does not revolve around it.

Folk medicine is all very well and may indeed have some things to teach us, but smallpox and polio were defeated by the concentrated power of modern medicine. When my aged limbs seize up I want a high-tech hip replacement, not a herbal rub. Aircraft stay in the air because modern technology has established the physical properties of aerofoils, not because we have successfully propitiated an ancestral spirit.

There is a difference between having an open mind and believing everything.

The other argument that emerges in this area of no fixed principles is: "Their opinions must have some merit because they truly, deeply believe them." Margaret Wilson summed this up perfectly when she said this week, in a different context: "You have got to respect people's sincerely held views."

Wrong. You don't have to respect views that are abhorrent. Sincerity is no validation. It would be difficult to argue that Pol Pot did not, most sincerely, believe that what he was doing was in the genuine interests of the Cambodian people. The Tamil Tiger suicide bombers get top marks for commitment but that doesn't make either their cause or their tactics right.

And this brings us back to the unlovely Mr Speight. His interesting personal and business career may raise the odd flicker of doubt about the altruism of his motives but there's no reason to disbelieve the sincerity of his commitment to what he sees as his people's struggle.

But Phil Goff is unequivocally right to condemn him. Speight confirmed the shabbiness of his moral grasp when he pulled the defining stroke of the blackmailer. As the pressure built up he declared it would be the fault of the military if shooting started and any hostages were hurt.

Again, wrong. The one and only reason the hostages were in peril was because Speight's gunmen had seized them. The sole moral responsibility rested with him. And now he is again threatening violence if he doesn't get his way.

Although the whiff of self-righteousness and belief in their own political infallibility which occasionally hangs over the Clark Government can be stomach-turning, in the case of Fiji Mr Goff is perfectly entitled to climb on the moral high ground and stay there.