Wasted energy

How many years of interrogations, how much ink writing up lists of charges, how many tons of rhetoric have been spent in the Siemens cash-for-contracts affair so we could just end up at Wednesday’s result?

How much energy has been dispensed so that a prosecutor would come forward and recommend that all charges be dropped against the only political figure who has confessed to handling illegal money?

Delayed justice is what you get from over-the-top scandalmongering, from putting criminal justice in a secondary role to political expedience. And not only does justice come late; sometimes it never comes at all, cultivating even more skepticism and suspicion that the system does indeed treat some with impunity.