The Tulsa Tribune
Saturday August 20, 1983
Opinion Page
Manipulation was despicable
Whether or not the deus ex machina in convicting House Speaker Draper and Majority Leader Fitzgibbon was the admission in federal court that members of the Girdner family arranged for falsified absentee vote ballots, is not the important issue.
The important thing is that this chicanery and rottenness was ferreted out and exposed. But because immunity was granted the Girdners by the federal court in exchange for their self-incriminating testimony, that same federal court cannot now pursue the culprits and bring them to justice.
But I am informed the state courts can, so it remains to be seen whether this canker on the “body politic” will be let go untreated, so to speak.
Such admitted manipulation of people in their sphere – customers of their store who could not read or write, or perhaps needed assistance or credit or help getting on welfare rolls – seems to amount to a form of peonage, servitude, bondage, if you please, and has no place in these United States.
Mrs. Gayle Bowden Ward
Route 1, Box 77, Fort Gibson
Perhaps justice will prevail
Mr. Draper may not get his wrists slapped, and the Barney Girdners may feel no one is listening, but many are. We’re praying the case rests on the judge, who just may be a righteous judge and save the face of a judiciary system. We’ll have to wait and see.
Why teach young people about a judicial system which in the course of history has sometimes proved right, when some (too many) of our state’s highest have made a mockery of our courts these past few days?
Ethel Coleman Torres
P.O. Box 658, Weleetka
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