Nuvem MLA Mickky Pacheco has run out of his quota of sympathy and concern. While the circumstances that led to his conviction in what is now referred to as “Slapgate”, for assaulting a Junior engineer, smacks of politics, that doesn’t give him any legal immunity.
The Highest Court of the land has upheld an order of the High Court convicting him and sentencing him to six months in jail. During the pendency of the period before the expiry of the period by which he had to surrender, many of his supporters and legal experts felt that he had every right to try legal options and move the Apex court for a review. Pacheco, waited in hope that the Supreme Court would mention his review petition and agree to hear it.
The Court in fact has done that. However the beleaguered MLA has no legal protection against arrest and law demands that he surrender, since fresh arrest warrants have been issued against him. What would have been becoming of a former minister and MLA, would have been to surrender as soon as the Apex Court order was out, and then approach the Court for Review. If he was successful, he would have come out. The argument that he is actually innocent because the Apex Court did not examine all the witnesses in the case does not hold any ground at this stage, when the Apex court has not begun hearing his review petition. The legal position at this moment is the Mickky Pacheco is a convict on the run, with a fresh arrest warrant against him.
The position he is taking borders on the despicable. His line is that he will not give himself up to the police till the Supreme Court hears his review petition. Pacheco cannot be framing his own laws. His action in the past seven days, where he has behaved exactly like a convict on the run, is shameful and the sympathy one had when his conviction was upheld by the Supreme Court has waned.
Public representatives, even more than the public, have to raise the bar for transparency and the following of the rule of law. Goa’s politicians haven’t even begun to set standards, leave alone raise them, but Mickky Pacheco’s actions have lowered the bar to a large extent.
The MLA, it must be admitted has had more than his fair share of setbacks and political victimization. His arrest, after the suicide of his friend Nadia Torrado, was a blatant misuse of power by the then Congress government. While his act of slapping the electrical engineer calls for action, the ratio of crime to punishment has tilted against him. But the hard, unfortunate and perhaps unfair truth is that he is a convict. He still is and he is on the run. And no amount of recognizing the unfairness of many of actions against him will obliterate the fact that he is defying and mocking the law.
Mickky Pacheco must surrender in Court tomorrow and allow the law to take its course, however harsh the course may be.
