THE CONSEQUENCES OF EVADING ACCOUNTABILITY (An Admonition to Leaders, Institutions, and the Populace)
Accountability is the quiet spine of any society, when it is bent, everything else learns to limp. A leader who evades accountability does not merely fail in duty; they teach negligence by example. Power, when unexamined, begins to believe it is exempt; from consequence, from conscience, from correction, and when those at the top refuse to answer for their actions, truth descends the ladder, distorted at every rung. Institutions are meant to outlive individuals, yet when they learn avoidance, they begin to rot from within. Policies become performances, rules become selective, and responsibility becomes a transferable burden, always passed downward, never upward. An institution that cannot account for itself eventually cannot protect those it was created to serve. But accountability does not fail in isolation, the populace, too, bears weight. Silence in the face of wrongdoing is not neutrality; it is participation without fingerprints. When citizens excuse corruption because ...
