Theo Fer­gu­son

T&T now oc­cu­pies a po­si­tion among the more cor­rupt coun­tries of the world. Cor­rup­tion seems to have be­come nor­malised as part of the cul­ture of the so­ci­ety and what is most dis­turb­ing is how ac­cept­ing we have be­come of the cor­rupt ways of some of our politi­cians, po­lice of­fi­cers, busi­ness­men and pub­lic ser­vants. The lat­est da­ta from Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al gives T&T a Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex of 3.2 out of a max­i­mum score of ten (where ten is least cor­rupt) and ranks Tri­ni-dad as 91st among 183 coun­tries. Most hu­man be­ings love to be seen to be of good char­ac­ter. We take great um­brage when any­one says any­thing that we in­ter­pret as im­ping­ing on what we con­sid­er to be our "good char­ac­ter," whether or not what is be­ing said is true. Com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters is our in­flat­ed ego, which dri­ves us to want to present our­selves as be­ing bet­ter than we re­al­ly are. As a re­sult, we end up telling lies about our­selves, thus de­ceiv­ing our­selves in­to be­liev­ing that we are re­al­ly good peo­ple. In­nate in every hu­man be­ing is a deep de­sire to be good and to be seen to be good even though our be­hav­iours may be any­thing but good. This is so be­cause we all have a con­science which speaks one lan­guage across our hu­man­i­ty.

Do­ing good is not a mat­ter of whether we break the law or whether we get caught by the law. It is more a mat­ter of whether or not we have in­fringed on our con­science and whether or not we have been fair to oth­ers. We of­ten hear peo­ple say: "I have done no wrong be­cause I have not bro­ken any law." Un­for­tu­nate­ly, al­though the law is sup­posed to have a moral foun­da­tion, it does not al­ways equate with moral­i­ty. Our for­mer Pres­i­dent and le­gal lu­mi­nary, Noor Has­sanali, re­mind­ed us that "man-made law can­not reg­u­late or con­trol all as­pects of moral­i­ty. We are, how­ev­er, al­so com­mit­ted to re­spect for moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues. Civi-lised so­ci­ety can­not sur­vive as such in the ab­sence of ac­cept­able moral or­der. Com­mit­ment to 'in­tegri­ty' is an es­sen­tial con­sid­er­a­tion in any as­sess­ment of the char­ac­ter of the in­di­vid­ual mem­ber of our so­ci­ety." So laws alone are not good enough. We must al­so grow the moral base of our so­ci­ety if we are to be­gin to re­verse the slide to­wards be­com­ing more and more of an im­moral so­ci­ety as in­di­cat­ed by the de­clin­ing Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tion In­dex over the past ten years. It is Pla­to who told us: "Good peo­ple do not need laws to tell them to act re­spon­si­bly, while bad peo­ple will find a way around the laws."

As a so­ci­ety we seem to have be­come over­ly ob­sessed with earn­ing mon­ey at all costs and have be­come en­meshed in a greedy and ma­te­ri­al­is­tic world in which we eas­i­ly com­pro­mise our val­ues for pow­er and ma­te­r­i­al priv­i­leges. The cor­rupt na­ture of our so­ci­ety is not just the re­sult of hav­ing cor­rupt politi­cians, cor­rupt po­lice of­fi­cers, cor­rupt busi­ness­men or cor­rupt pub­lic ser­vants. It is more re­lat­ed to the fact that we have cor­rupt cit­i­zens, some of whom be­come politi­cians, po­lice of­fi­cers, busi­ness­men and pub­lic ser­vants. In cor­rect­ing the prob­lem we need to ex­am­ine our­selves as in­di­vid­u­als and de­ter­mine the ex­tent to which we our­selves have be­come part of the prob­lem. Talk­ing about the prob­lem does not bring a so­lu­tion, which can on­ly come when, as in­di­vid­u­als, we change our own be­hav­iours and thus be­come bet­ter role mod­els for those with­in our sphere of in­flu­ence.

It is clear that we can­not re­ly on our le­gal sys­tem to lead us out of the morass in which we now find our­selves. We must re­mem­ber that our po­lice, our lawyers, our mag­is­trates and our judges are all prod­ucts of the cor­rupt cul­ture that has now be­come "nor­mal." And as Noor Has­sanali re­mind­ed us, we have to have greater re­spect for our moral and spir­i­tu­al val­ues. There is an ur­gent need for lead­er­ship that can lead T&T out of this grow­ing state of ni­hilism. Such lead­er­ship must not on­ly talk to the is­sues but must al­so be pre­pared to role-mod­el through their own ac­tions, the be­hav­iours that we would like to see and which ul­ti­mate­ly we would like to dom­i­nate our cul­ture.

My chal­lenge to the peo­ple of T&T is for us to learn to live by our con­science and to trust our con­science to guide us in our day-to-day ac­tiv­i­ties. It means that we have to de­vel­op greater con­scious aware­ness and the best way to do this is to pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly step away from the noisy world in which we find our­selves so that we can bet­ter hear our in­ner selves and bet­ter hear that in­ner voice which is the best guide that we have in or lives. We need to spend more time in silent in­tro­spec­tion and take the ad­vice of Fr Gre­go­ry Ramkis­sion, a Trinida­di­an who leads the Mus­tard Seed Com­mu­ni­ties in Ja­mai-ca, when he tells us that: "Carib- bean peo­ple must de­vel­op a sense of quiet­ness."