Pao­lo Ker­na­han

The gri­mace on Jack Warn­er's face as he slunk away from Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence spoke vol­umes.Ever un­able to hold his tongue, Mr Warn­er told re­porters when he spoke with the Prime Min­is­ter he was as­sured by her that she nev­er used the word "shocked" in de­scrib­ing the avalanche of rev­e­la­tions in the Con­ca­caf cor­rup­tion re­port.

That im­plies that Mr Warn­er had come to ex­pect the Prime Min­is­ter's con­tin­ued un­wa­ver­ing sup­port, the kind that had come to de­fine their re­la­tion­ship even as the for­mer foot­ball boss was the chief light­en­ing rod for al­le­ga­tions of fi­nan­cial chi­canery and oth­er un­savoury ac­tions for the en­tire life of the Gov­ern­ment thus far.The Prime Min­is­ter, it seems, de­cid­ed that this was an al­ba­tross she was no longer pre­pared to bear re­gard­less of the ram­i­fi­ca­tions of Mr Warn­er's de­par­ture.

Just hours be­fore he was ban­ished from the karaoke palace he bel­lowed a de­fi­ant "I'm not go­ing any­where!" in­to the mi­cro­phones of wait­ing re­porters. It had al­ways been pre­dict­ed that Mr Warn­er would not "go gen­tly in­to that good" night and that this is per­haps the rea­son for the Prime Min­is­ter's baf­fling, stri­dent de­fence of a man who in­vent­ed the "moral quag­mire."There will be those who be­lieve that Mr Warn­er's de­par­ture is the ex­cis­ing of a can­cer­ous tu­mour from an oth­er­wise "sound po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tion."

The list of be­tray­als of the pub­lic trust, how­ev­er, is far too weighty for atone­ment through the sac­ri­fice of the UNC's on­ly be­got­ten son.It was ob­served by a com­men­ta­tor in a news­pa­per re­cent­ly that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship has ush­ered in an un­prece­dent­ed era of res­ig­na­tions and dis­missals by pub­lic of­fi­cials found want­i­ng in the in­tegri­ty de­part­ment.

The ob­ser­va­tion was made to sug­gest that this is a tec­ton­ic shift in the way in which ac­count­abil­i­ty is ex­tract­ed from our lead­ers. We'd grown ac­cus­tomed to politi­cians go­ing down with guns blaz­ing, or flee­ing the ju­ris­dic­tion and the clutch­es of jus­tice. Per­haps then the ar­gu­ment is that that the Prime Min­is­ter has demon­strat­ed an un­com­mon in­tol­er­ance of mis­be­hav­iour in pub­lic of­fice.It could al­so be in­ter­pret­ed as, "That is a hell of a lot of peo­ple who had to go!"

So­cial ac­tivist Kirk Wait­he of Fix­in' T&T fol­lowed Mr Warn­er's res­ig­na­tion with the de­mand that the Prime Min­is­ter should seek a fresh man­date. I have on­ly the great­est re­spect for Kirk and I con­sid­er him a friend, but that is rub­bish. It al­so fails to hone in on the cen­tral prob­lem–lead­er­ship. Jour­nal­ists are more fear­less than ever in the ex­e­cu­tion of their du­ties, pro­vid­ing the pub­lic with crit­i­cal in­for­ma­tion to in­form opin­ion on the short­com­ings of the Gov­ern­ment.

What this has done, as­sist­ed ably by so­cial me­dia, is re­shaped pub­lic per­cep­tion of in­di­vid­u­als in pub­lic life. Gone are the days of "well dat is how de gu­va­ment is, wha yuh go do?" We are now hy­per­sen­si­tive to mis­con­duct in pub­lic life and cit­i­zens will no longer stom­ach the busi­ness-as-usu­al of the past.That is ex­act­ly what con­tributed in large part to the blis­ter­ing de­feat of the PNM at the polls. This new-found "pow­er of the peo­ple" though, has not of­fered any so­lu­tions for the vex­ing co­nun­drum.

How do we cul­ti­vate the sort of lead­er­ship which can re­store pub­lic trust and steer the coun­try for­ward on an even keel? How do we avoid elect­ing a bunch of "strangers" with uni­ver­si­ty de­grees who sweet talk us on the plat­form then curse us in cau­cus? There has al­ways been de­bate about cam­paign fi­nance re­form but that, much like con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, is con­ver­sa­tion for op­po­si­tion folk. Once in of­fice, such no­ble ideals tend to lose their lus­tre.

Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in his pub­lic meet­ings, ac­knowl­edges the egre­gious be­tray­als of the pub­lic by his par­ty, re­call­ing that re­venge was ex­act­ed at the polls.I have yet to hear (or per­haps he hasn't been asked) how Dr Row­ley pro­pos­es to trans­form the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture which ger­mi­nat­ed the fi­as­cos of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion. How can the pub­lic place their trust in the very same peo­ple who sus­tained silent com­plic­i­ty in the chill­ing shad­ow of Herr Man­ning?

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion can't man­u­fac­ture peo­ple of in­tegri­ty. While it is a step in the right di­rec­tion, cam­paign fi­nance re­form can scarce­ly en­sure that cit­i­zens who of­fer them­selves for pub­lic of­fice have the moral rec­ti­tude to earn that right.

"Pol­i­tics has a moral­i­ty of its own," quoth Pan­day, and we seem to think he was re­fer­ring on­ly to him­self and his par­ty. We are fo­cused in­tent­ly on Mr Warn­er giv­en his re­cent res­ig­na­tion from every­thing ex­cept talk­ing. He did not do so with­out ref­er­ence to the Prime Min­is­ter's shad­owy ad­vi­sors. In his part­ing shot he made it clear that we have more to fear than just him in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship.

While every­one dances on Mr Warn­er's po­lit­i­cal grave, we are still left with the unan­swered ques­tion: how do we draw from so­ci­ety ho­n­ourable peo­ple to lead us? That has al­ways been our great­est fear and our great­est weak­ness. If you look in­to the abyss, you may just find your­self look­ing back.