Justice & Law Quote by Kamisese Mara

The line lands like a damage report from someone who knows how quickly “stability” becomes a brand politicians sell when the ground is already shifting. Mara isn’t just describing weakened courts and a soft economy; he’s staging a chain reaction: undermine the judiciary, and the fear of disorder follows; once fear spreads, money retreats; once money retreats, jobs go, and public patience goes with them. It’s a neat causal script that turns institutional fragility into a pocketbook emergency.

As a statesman, Mara’s intent is corrective and legitimizing. By insisting the citizenry “justifiably feared” breakdown, he grants public anxiety moral standing while quietly narrowing the acceptable response. If fear is justified, then exceptional measures can be framed as prudence rather than power-grab. The judiciary is singled out because it’s the symbolic spine of a modern state: weaken it and you don’t only lose cases, you lose the story that rules still rule.

The business community enters as both victim and barometer. “Sales and confidence” reads like a paired diagnosis: one measurable, one psychological. That matters because confidence is contagious, and leaders often invoke it when they want the public to accept that politics is now an economic variable. The subtext: legitimacy isn’t only earned at the ballot box; it’s enforced by functioning courts and validated by markets. In the postcolonial Pacific context Mara inhabited, where coups and constitutional crises were not abstractions, this is also a warning about how swiftly institutional damage can launder itself into everyday hardship - the kind that makes democratic norms feel like a luxury.