The saga of the Anil Roberts/Life Sport debacle has underlined the long-mooted calls for overhauling of the country's Constitution.The startling revelation of the sordid state of affairs–financial–of the now-scrapped programme, which offered hope to needy young men in our society, has sparked a nationwide debate as to who is culpable in the eventual shutdown of the venture, the brainchild of Mr Roberts.
At the outset let me state categorically, especially for my friends who are of the PNM persuasion, that this is not in defence of Mr Roberts. He can defend himself better than I can do and he has taken the fight to his detractors, all of whom are crying for his political head for more than one reason, which I will examine later on.I also want to make it clear that I too was among those who said that even though he is one of the best sports ministers this country ever had, and in the spirit of the Westminster system which we conveniently choose to say we base our governance system on, I thought that as the minister who presided over this debacle, he should do the honourable thing and resign, pronto.
However, it is not the best thing to act in haste in certain instances, a habit I have adopted in the scolding or chastising of my children. You must approach certain things with a level head, otherwise you tend to make rash decisions and adopt positions which at the end of the day will not achieve what was intended.It was in this light, while musing over the entire situation and with what came out in the audit of the programme by the Ministry of Finance, I asked myself how this venture with such promising results could have gone so horribly wrong?