The effect of the law relates only to a minuscule segment of the totality of our life activities. Any benefit for the greater segment of our lives can only be obtained through a code of corporate ethics which is ingrained in the lives of all our people, said Judge Dr. C. G. Weeramantry addressing at the 2004 convocation of Postgraduate Institute of Management University of Sri Jayewardenepura, at the BMICH on Wednesday.

"Corporate power is increasing over every area of our lives, the quality of the food we eat, the air we breathe, the water we drink, the drugs we depend on, the news we receive, the clothes we wear, all this is determined for us by international corporations which encircle the globe with their influence and their products. They determine standards and quality and price and availability, for it is they who manufacture the relevant products and determine how, when and in what quantities they will be sold.

"We are dependent on corporate for our fuel and electricity, our transport and hospital facilities and practically every detail of our daily living. In fact we tend to be deprived to a large extent of our right to be participants in the determination of our lifestyles. Rather we are passive recipients of standards, habits and practices which are dictated to us by those who are in control of these services.

Consequently, there are very few aspects of individual life which are not in same way influenced or regulated by corporate actions and the means by decisions taken in corporate boardrooms across the world, he said.

This power intrudes into the areas of state authority since many countries are dependent on large corporation whose turnover is much layer that the national budget of many of these countries. Unlike leaders of nations who are responsible to the people, corporates in effect are shielded by multiple layers of corporate registration which imposes a screen or veil on the resulting action and the actual person or entity that initiated it.

There are a number of myths that have been propagated in an attempt to gloss over the anomalies between corporate power and democratic principles, between corporate might and the sovereign state, between the corporate profit motive and the public interest. Citizens are made to believe that corporations function within domestic legal systems and in accordance with democratic principle, that they are completely amenable within a given territory to the will of its sovereign government, that service to the public is their prime concern, he added.

Citizens are made to believe that it is they who dictate the standards and the content of their daily lives, for have they not elected parliaments and city councils? Have they not courts and tribunals to bring to book and to enforce the observance of standards? Have they not as consumers the ultimate right to dictate to their suppliers the standards they expect and the products they consume? There are myths which the corporate world propagates and fosters, and it is only a few citizens, especially of poorer countries, who realize that the food they eat, the products they consume, the quality of the atmosphere and the lakes and seas and the pattern of their lifestyles are often decided in the corporate boardrooms of the affluent world, he said.

In this context it is essential that ethical cords be taught intensively to the mercantile community so that they become part of their governing patterns of conduct. There codes must be ingrained in the conscience of those who work in a position of responsibility in the corporate sector. Without it, merely committing ethical principles to paper in the form of a code is valueless, Weeramantry emphasized.

There is a great challenge presented by corporate might to the educators of this world, to step up ethical standards and sensitivities of all citizens so that they will not be misled by corporate propaganda or mistreated by corporate might. The route to do this is by the devising, adoption and introducing of codes of corporate conduct. With them we can make a beginning in the vast task of bridling corporate power. Without it corporate power would reign unbridled, trample over the rights of citizens and even ride over the powers of the sovereign state, he concluded.