Transgressions and infractions

Ethics and Law do not presuppose that all acts of public managers are legally perfect, or that managers are immune to professional or personal errors. Wrong tenders, mistaken decisions, risks taken on a distorted assessment of scenarios: there is a set of situations that characterize what we can call the legally tolerable error of public administrators. I usually draw the parallel with other professions: lawyers, judges, members of the Public Prosecution Service, how many illegalities do they commit in the exercise of their functions? Suffice it to recall that a criminal action, dismissed or halted by habeas corpus, presupposes the recognition of an abuse of power on the part of the author of the action, a manifest illegality. Nevertheless, there will be no prospect of personal liability of the authority who signed the accusatory pleading deemed abusive. And the same is said of judgments reversed in the Courts or of writs of mandamus granted against judicial acts. Hence the question: for what reason, only in relation to public managers, especially mayors and secretaries, is it normal to demand a rigor in public decisions that is not demanded of any public agent?

The field of transgressions exists and, in a way, is inevitable in a world of open laws exposed to multiple interpretations. Separating the wheat from the chaff is the challenge. Showing what is intolerable, what is improbity or crime, and what constitutes a risk inherent to the functions seems to me a fundamental topic for debate in the oversight institutions, on pain of enshrining growing distortions. Is an illegal accumulation of public offices improbity or a mere irregularity? Is the receipt of illegal salaries (without legal basis or exceeding the ceiling) a greater or lesser offense? To what list of offenses does the abusive and willful opening of an investigation or proceeding against someone, in order to harm him, belong? It is indeed important that we abandon a certain institutional hypocrisy in certain debates, recovering greater authenticity in the discussions. On the side of the institutions charged with implementing the State's punitive power, what matters is the professionalization of the work, of focus and of goals. A proceeding dressed in spectacle is of no use if the result is paltry.

Lawyer