PT Corruption in the Senate - fact or fiction?

I do apologise if there is already a thread on this but I was involved in this thread about Republic v Separatists and a common theme in that thread was of corruption in the Senate and this got me wondering - how much corruption really was there in the Old Republic Senate?

Our main evidence for this comes from a certain Senator Palpatine.

Now I think we all know that Senator Palpatine turns out to be a bad apple. We know he is a liar and a Sith Lord and we also know that he has a strong vested interest in weakening Queen Amidala's faith in both the Senate and in Chancellor Valorum.

In the chamber itself we see little evidence that the Senate is corrupt. To be sure, the Trade Federation Senator tries to bog down the case in procedure but then this is what we would expect from the Trade Federation Senator. So Palpatine is corrupt and the TF Senator is corrupt. But does the corruption of those two individuals mean that the entire chamber is corrupt? Surely not. In the very same way, does one bad Judge mean the entire Judiciary is rotten to the core? Of course not.

Indeed, the chamber is eager to get rid of Valorum who is clearly unable to stand up to vested interest sand replace him with a more powerful Chancellor. They weren't to know that by choosing Senator Palpatine they were choosing the most corrupt Senator of all. Don't forget that Palpatine had the support

In AOTC, we also see little evidence of corruption. The Senate, feeling a need to protect the Republic, decides very quickly to give Chancellor Palpatine emergency powers, something that would weaken a Senator's individual power which is surely not something that a corrupt body would stand for.

Now in ROTS we see that Senator's cheering for Palpatine's announcement of Galactic Empire. But does this necessarily mean that the Senate is corrupt? Perhaps not. After all, many of them may have been coerced or blackmailed into cheering the Empire. Then of course there is Palpatine's dark side influence.

So in conclusion, we actually have little compelling evidence that the Senate was corrupt. The only evidence comes from Senator Palpatine who as we all know is not to be trusted.

What do you guys think? Was the Senate as corrupt as has been suggested or was Senator Palpatine leading us up the garden path?

 

palpatine got elected. there's your answer.

 

But I'm betting his election campaign didn't bear the slogan: Palps lies, shoots lightning from his fingers and is a wannabe Emperor. Palps for Naboo! In other words, nobody really knew what they were letting themselves in for.

Well I wasn't suggesting that the Old Republic Senate was totally free of corruption. I was just suggesting that it wasn't as bad as has been made out.

 

Fair enough. In the context of Star Wars though, Palpatine claims that the Republic is not what it once was which strongly hints at better times in the past (presumably by this he means less corruption and a greater interest in the common good). Whether this can be taken at face value or whether this is just hyperbole on Palpatine's part is anyone's guess.

For those interested, here's a compilation of Palpatine's scenes from TPM which I found (some of them are for Darth Sidious as well as Senator Palpatine):

 

Was the entire senate Chamber Corrupt? Obviously not. With thousands of systems and thus thousands of Senators, there had to still be good and honorable Senators in the Senate. First one that comes to mind is Bail Organa. I know this is jumping to ROTS, and it was taken out of the movie, but, you had the Delegation of 2000. The 2000 being the Senators that wanted Palpatine to give back his emergency powers, and try to resolve the Clone Wars peacefully. So it's not hard to believe that many of those 2000 were good and honorable Senators during the time of TPM.

However, as we see in TPM, bureaucrats whom are under control of The Trade Federation, or any of the other Mega-Corps we come to meet in AOTC made it impossible for those good Senators to effectively work as the Senate was suppose to. We see this when Queen Amidala tries to get help for her Planet. The Trade Federation who isn't a planet, it's a business but holds a senate seat (a sign of corruption right there), interferes with her motion, and as Palpatine says, the bureaucrats take over. Chancellor Valorum is powerless and instead of acting on the Queen's request for help, Valorum is pushed into recommending a committee rather than calling for a direct vote to help Naboo. The direct vote surely would have gone Naboo's way, and that is why the bureaucrats pushed the Chancellor away from the vote so that everything could get "bogged down" in the Senate investigation. So in TPM we see how the corruption worked, it undermined the Senatorial process by having well placed bureaucrats, and also by having Senate seats that were either in alliance with, or were flat out bought by the Mega Corps, as again as we see in TPM when the Delegation from Malastare sides with the Trade Fed and seconds their motion for a commission.

I guess the problem is that Lucas can't spend the whole two hours showing us multiple examples of the Senate corruption. So we are suppose to understand that what we see happen with Amidala and the Naboo crisis in TPM is how the Senate now works in all manners of the process.

 

My theory is that Lucas just didn't write enough examples of corruption into the movie scripts.

 

Exactly. Think about this, why would a corporation have a seat in the Senate? In the real world, there are special interest groups and lobbyists, but Bill Gates isn't sitting in Congress passing legislation. These groups have long been held in contempt as reasons why tax breaks exists for the wealthy and why certain issues like global warming and better standards for reducing pollution are seen as jokes. Lucas went for a more obvious example with Lott Dodd sitting in the Senate.

 

Nice stuff. That's a pretty convincing case for not just the Senate but the entire Republic being well and truly rotten to the core. My thought on this though is that perhaps it is a shame that the mouthpiece for the Republic being corrupt view ends up being Senator Palpatine. Maybe if it had been Bail instead then it would have worked better? I don't know. Don't get me wrong, Senator Palpatine is played well and the scenes are done nicely. It's just that the premise of the most corrupt individual in the house complaining about corruption weakens it for me - don't know about you guys.

 

Ah, but Palpatine has to be the one to say it to Padme because he's a Naboo citizen and someone that Padme is supposed to trust. That's why he smiles when she leaves for Naboo.

 

Fact. The Senate and Republic itself was corrupt it is NOT all Sidious and Dooku.

 

If I am understanding you correctly, you have to remember that Palpatine was the "good" persona that was being put forward. He was speaking against corruption because he needed to make sure that he was not connected to any of the corruption. No one would ever suspect him of some master plan if he distanced himself, and even fought against corruption. Just like in AOTC, where Palpatine in his "good" persona is against any kind of war, however, we know he is the one that is actually creating the war. What Palpatine does in TPM is take advantage of the already established corruption to move himself into power.

 

mikeximus You are understanding me correctly and yes, good point.

 

I always loved that smile at that moment!

 

Perhaps it could be said that in TPM, Palpatine offers Padme and the rest of the Republic a Galactic palingenesis. There is a very large element of truth to what he says, but he might be exaggerating the problems with the Republic to get this child queen to think of him as her only ally.

 

I always considered it a dose of corruption, a heap of bureaucracy and a dash of indifference that led to the events being as they were.

 

I think the difficulty here is in conflating two very different types of corruption.

(1) The type of corruption that infested the Senate and bureaucracy (the same type we have in RL) : susceptibility to being bought; material greed; having weak principles easily swayed by money. This is what we *usually* mean by 'corruption'.

(2) The type of corruption that Palpatine exemplified: moral corruption. That's totally different from (1). Palpatine was not 'corrupt' in the *usual* sense --- because he couldn't be bought; he wasn't materially greedy; and while he didn't exactly have firm principles, but he did have clear goals that no amount of money was going to sway him from. Being a psychopath (*lack* of morality) isn't the same as being avaricious and morally *weak*.

Once those two senses of corruption are distinguished, there's no problem at all with how corruption in the Senate is portrayed. It's not weakened. Because the corruption Palpatine complains of (greed, weakness, flaccidity) is a totally different kind of thing from what Palpatine does, which is principled in a twisted way. For all we know, he himself believes the propoganda about his plans that he feeds Anakin which Anakin starts spewing to Obi-Wan ("peace, justice and stability to the galaxy" or whatever it was).

So Palpatine wasn't lying or being ironic when he talks about it. Neither was Dooku. That was the genius of Palpatine's plan: that he didn't manipulate people purely through lies. He made use of things that were true, and obvious to those who cared about democracy, and he made use of those people's noble intentions to make things better.

BTW Palpatine isn't the only person who outright tells us about corruption; Obi-Wan makes his position pretty clear in AotC, just before he autodefenestrates

 

Palpatine needed a good Halliburton or Bechtel corporation with a scarce handful of Dick Cheney's, and wonder of wonders, elective war On Demand like an HBO channel, with a subscription for as long as necessary.

 

The corruption was the result of the Sith spending years manipulating events to go as they have. They're the ones who pushed and prodded all the corporations to be where they are at the start of TPM.

 

Not entirely it wasn't.

 

What makes you say that? The Sith didn't just sit around scratching their junk, waiting for the corruption to set it. They spent the millennium preparing their revenge. They're manipulators. They manipulate.

 

I have to agree with Cushing's Admirer on this one. While I am sure that the Sith did have something to do with some of the Corruption, it's very hard to believe that they had everything to do with all the corruption. Greed just doesn't show up because the Sith did.

 

I don't know. The fact that Palpatine had such close relationship with the Trade Federation (he could call up their Viceroy at any time) hints at a wider active role that the Sith were taking in building up alliances, bogging down the Senate, subverting the public interest etc.

 

I never said they weren't, Sinister. I simply don't believe the Sith are responsible for every bad thing in SW as it appears some do. There is personal choice also in play.