Institutional mechanisms don’t work any more; need to convert electorate to honest people: Judge Zak Yacoob

Institutional mechanisms often collapse under the burden of corruption and what is needed is a social revolution where voters can be transformed into honest people, retired South African judge Zakeria Mohammed Yacoob said here on Monday.

“Corruption is the worst part,” said Judge ‘Zak’, as he is affectionately known. “You can finally have a structure… you can have people appointed and of course you can have special electoral tribunals because election disputes will have to be resolved very, very quickly. I have found that all these mechanisms, although they have worked for us in the past, do not work anymore,” Zak added, speaking to a group of students, law practitioners and disabled activists at the office of the Chennai-based anti-corruption campaign group Arappor Iyakkam.

“I thought a lot. What do you do? How can we improve the structures? How can we make things better than they are? Then I realized that before we can do that, we need to make the voters good, honest people. What we need is some kind of social revolution. We should try to make the majority of people in society honest and generally honorable,” Zak observed. “Make sure that there are structures of honest people who try to make others honest people, and that is a very powerful revolutionary process.”

He argued that improving the education system to preserve moral values ​​and minimize prejudices was the way forward.

When asked about his opinion on disabled people forming a political party, he said that he would prefer disabled people to participate in society and become an integral part of it. He said all political parties should work to ensure that people with disabilities are properly served.

Responding to a question, he said he was quite thrilled that South Africa had taken Israel to the International Court of Justice for “wholesale exploitation, killing, and extermination of the people of Gaza”.

Lawyer and human rights activist V. Suresh, co-founder Jayaram Venkatesan, Arappor Iyakkam and advocate and rights activist Sudha Ramalingam were present.