Michael Del­blond

Ac­cord­ing to Fran­cis Ba­con, Pon­tius Pi­late is sup­posed to have asked the ques­tion: "What is truth?" But would not wait for an an­swer. I shud­der to think what Pi­late's re­sponse would have been, were he asked to in­quire, in to­day's po­lit­i­cal set­ting, as to a work­ing de­f­i­n­i­tion of the word "in­tegri­ty." Which brings me to the ques­tion of how se­ri­ous­ly we should re­gard the stri­dent rhetoric of our lo­cal politi­cians re: "moral­i­ty in pub­lic af­fairs, trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty"-the new buzz words. I'm ad­vised that a pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion had pos­tu­lat­ed, for the sup­posed guid­ance of its mem­bers, "a code of con­duct," or some such thing. I sup­pose it could al­so be con­sid­ered a code of ethics. I won't be sur­prised if such code, what­ev­er it was, was "more ho­n­oured in the breach than the ob­ser­vance."

Iron­i­cal­ly, there's some­thing called "sit­u­a­tion­al ethics," which on­ly re­quires that one cov­ers the square part of the anato­my. Our first Prime Min­is­ter made the slo­gan "moral­i­ty in pub­lic af­fairs" a ma­jor plank of his po­lit­i­cal plat­form. Even when there was march­ing up and down the place, with heavy weath­er be­ing made of the per­cep­tion of ram­pant cor­rup­tion on his watch, Dr Williams con­tin­ued to turn a blind eye and a deaf ear to those al­le­ga­tions.Al­though the "moral­i­ty slo­gan" had be­gun to sound hol­low and had os­ten­si­bly lost much of its va­lid­i­ty, there were still peo­ple of stature and stand­ing in the so­ci­ety who failed to see the writ­ing on the wall.

Among them was Karl de la Bastide, who, fol­low­ing Dr Williams's death, pub­licly ex­pressed the view that the late Prime Min­is­ter was very se­ri­ous about in­tegri­ty leg­is­la­tion as a means of deal­ing with the haunt­ing spec­tre of cor­rup­tion in pub­lic af­fairs. De la Bastide ex­pressed the firm con­vic­tion that had Williams lived a lit­tle longer he would have pushed through the in­tegri­ty leg­is­la­tion very force­ful­ly. Of course, a per­ceived in­tent need not en­tail a firm com­mit­ment. How­ev­er, be­ing will­ing or even ea­ger to give Dr Williams the ben­e­fit of the doubt, it's dif­fi­cult to rec­on­cile Mr de la Bastide's faith and as­sump­tions with much that is well known and eas­i­ly ver­i­fi­able.

To take one of sev­er­al ex­am­ples. In 1967 Karl de la Bastide was ap­point­ed to in­ves­ti­gate and re­port on what was pop­u­lar­ly known as "The Gas Sta­tion Rack­et." His re­port com­mend­ed the "star wit­ness" for her as­sis­tance to the com­mis­sion. Lit­tle did the well-mean­ing gen­tle­man an­tic­i­pate that it's the whistle­blow­er rather than the trans­gres­sor that's called up­on to re­pent. In the event the on­ly one who was re­al­ly pun­ished, nay cru­ci­fied, was the per­son who ex­posed the rack­et. Per­haps this was meant to send a mes­sage that there was a price to pay for up­set­ting some­one's ap­ple cart. A for­mer "over en­thu­si­as­tic" At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in the Williams ad­min­is­tra­tion (Sel­wyn Richard­son) sub­se­quent­ly gave vent pub­licly to his frus­tra­tion in re­spect of his abort­ed ef­forts to have in­tegri­ty leg­is­la­tion with teeth through to the statute books.

More­over, he claimed that when he was on the brink of crack­ing a big cor­rup­tion case, his PM sent him on some di­ver­sion­ary mis­sion-"on a slow boat to Chi­na," so to speak. Dr Williams and sub­se­quent ad­min­is­tra­tions dil­ly-dal­lied over the ef­fec­tive struc­tur­ing and im­ple­men­ta­tion of the "in­tegri­ty in pub­lic af­fairs" leg­is­la­tion. It's no won­der that we can be told brass-faced­ly that pol­i­tics has its own pe­cu­liar ethics or "tak­ing a vow of pover­ty" was no pre­con­di­tion for en­ter­ing the po­lit­i­cal are­na. Sad­ly, there ap­pears to be a seem­ing­ly un­bridge­able chasm be­tween pre­cepts mouthed on the hus­tings and du­plic­i­tous prac­tices brazen­ly man­i­fest­ed in gov­er­nance. That ob­tains like the prover­bial re­cur­ring dec­i­mal.

It must have been about a year or two ago that we were near­ly hood­winked in­to hav­ing on the statute books "in­tegri­ty stip­u­la­tions" that would amount to the an­tithe­sis of any gen­uine in­tegri­ty leg­is­la­tion. Since with­drawn or amend­ed, it struck me as be­ing con­ve­nient­ly de­signed as "an es­cape hatch" for the prover­bial po­lit­i­cal rogue ele­phants, run­away hors­es who treat the pub­lic purse as their "milch cow" in­stead of en­sur­ing that their du­ty was to serve the in­ter­ests of the pub­lic and not "scram­bling at the pub­lic troughs for scraps of favour." Men have been know in the past to be hound­ed out of of­fice for al­leged­ly mis­ap­pro­pri­at­ing what by to­day's stan­dards would be re­gard­ed as mere peanuts. Con­flicts of in­ter­est and in­flu­ence ped­dling are still alive and kick­ing.

The prob­lem ap­pears not to have stemmed from a lapse, aber­ra­tion or fray­ing at the edges. Pro­posed In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion leg­is­la­tion is some­times held up as the mag­ic wand, panacea or "open sesame" to deal with cor­rup­tion in pub­lic af­fairs and con­sign Ali Ba­ba and his 40 plus thieves to where they be­long. Slight prob­lem-who will guard the guards? De­spite the fin­ger-point­ing and mud-wrestling con­tests to de­ter­mine which bot­tom is black­er be­tween pot and ket­tle, it ought to be crys­tal clear that cor­rup­tion is anath­e­ma to pru­dent plan­ning and care­ful man­age­ment. In any case, who­ev­er gave any­one the pre­rog­a­tive to pil­fer, plun­der and squan­der the na­tion­al pat­ri­mo­ny and the in­her­i­tance of gen­er­a­tions yet un­born? One as­sumes that politi­cians, of what­ev­er stripe, have a com­mon in­ter­est in be­ing seen on the side of pro­bity and ra­tio­nal­i­ty. A galac­tic as­sump­tion, you might think.