GILLIAN LUCKY

While the no-con­fi­dence mo­tion de­bate in the Low­er House has come to an end, with a rul­ing by the Speak­er that Dr Row­ley must ap­pear be­fore the Com­mit­tee of Priv­i­leges, the con­tro­ver­sies and un­ease that have been sparked by the rev­e­la­tions in the must-be-val­i­dat­ed e-mails have on­ly just be­gun.Our pop­u­la­tion is ac­cus­tomed to hear­ing star­tling de­tails of po­lit­i­cal con­spir­a­cies and un­for­tu­nate­ly, be­cause of the vol­ume of scan­dal that bom­bards us, there is usu­al­ly no clo­sure or sat­is­fac­to­ry han­dling of mat­ters that cause great alarm and might I add, in some in­stances, fear.The re­cent dis­clo­sure made by the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion in the House has done much more than raise eye­brows and drop jaws; it has brought to the fore is­sues that, if not re­solved or ad­e­quate­ly ad­dressed, would leave the cit­i­zen­ry with high­ly sus­pi­cious minds and a grow­ing lack of con­fi­dence in all politi­cians.The e-mail mess, as it has been de­scribed, must be cleaned up quick­ly with noth­ing falling through the cracks, oth­er­wise the cred­i­bil­i­ty of sev­er­al mem­bers of the House will be se­vere­ly com­pro­mised.

Com­ing for­ward

Dr Row­ley has been chas­tised for, among oth­er things, us­ing the House to spill the beans and the lengthy time frame of six months to bring his in­for­ma­tion for­ward.With re­spect to the first is­sue, there is noth­ing in­ap­pro­pri­ate for a mem­ber of the House, in ac­cor­dance with his oath of of­fice, to use his right to free­dom of ex­pres­sion with the ad­di­tion­al ben­e­fit of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to dis­charge his re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to the peo­ple in a con­sci­en­tious and im­par­tial man­ner.Of course, if the dis­clo­sure made in the House has been prompt­ed by im­prop­er mo­tive or reeks of mis­chie­vous in­tent, then that is a whol­ly dif­fer­ent mat­ter.Even if the con­tent of the dis­clo­sure is in­ac­cu­rate, a mem­ber should on­ly be sanc­tioned, and se­ri­ous­ly so, if there was a de­lib­er­ate and will­ful in­ten­tion to mis­lead the House, for that would be tan­ta­mount to an abuse of priv­i­lege.So, in the ab­sence of any ma­li­cious in­ten­tion or gross­ly reck­less con­duct, a mem­ber who makes a dis­clo­sure in the Par­lia­ment which is sub­se­quent­ly found to be false is ex­pect­ed to gen­uine­ly apol­o­gise for mis­lead­ing the House.The ob­vi­ous re­sult would be the to­tal loss of cred­i­bil­i­ty of the mem­ber and the po­lit­i­cal con­se­quences that fol­low.

Where to go

On the sec­ond is­sue of the time that elapsed be­fore mak­ing the in­for­ma­tion pub­lic, one must de­ter­mine what ought to be done by a par­lia­men­tar­i­an who gets pos­ses­sion of high­ly sen­si­tive and po­ten­tial­ly in­crim­i­nat­ing ma­te­r­i­al.While the im­me­di­ate re­sponse might be to take it to the law en­force­ment agency, in the in­stant mat­ter one has to de­ter­mine whether oth­er av­enues were ex­plored, and if so, were such chan­nels ap­pro­pri­ate in light of pre­vail­ing con­di­tions and the al­le­ga­tions in the doc­u­ments.Ac­cord­ing to Dr Row­ley, the ma­te­r­i­al was giv­en to the for­mer pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic, and so, on this spe­cif­ic count, there can be no ac­cu­sa­tion of in­ac­tion on the part of the re­ceiv­er of the in­for­ma­tion.And if the for­mer pres­i­dent was in fact the re­cip­i­ent of the ma­te­r­i­al, it begs the ques­tion what, if any, course of ac­tion was tak­en by his ex­cel­len­cy who is not, by virtue of his of­fice, clothed with in­ves­tiga­tive pow­ers.Ac­cord­ing to PNM PRO Faris al-Rawi, the for­mer head of state sent it to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and so, for those who are lead­ing the po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion, this is a mat­ter that has to be ver­i­fied.

Find the truth

The best way to re­store a lev­el of com­fort to the vast ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens who were af­fect­ed and/or trau­ma­tised by the e-mail dis­clo­sure is to en­sure an in­de­pen­dent in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the mat­ter with full de­tails of the find­ings be­ing made pub­lic.For­mer head of the Cen­tral Au­thor­i­ty, David West has sug­gest­ed that the pro­vi­sions of the Mu­tu­al As­sis­tance in Crim­i­nal Mat­ters Act should be in­voked, and right­ly so, be­cause this kind of mat­ter de­mands the high­est pub­lic scruti­ny and the use of for­eign ex­per­tise.There is too much at stake for peo­ple to be us­ing pol­i­tics to solve a mat­ter that may in­volve crim­i­nal cul­pa­bil­i­ty.And while the gen­er­al rule is that he who ac­cus­es must prove, in this in­stance it is mem­bers of the Gov­ern­ment who have been ac­cused but who, by virtue of the of­fices they hold and the re­sources avail­able to them, are best equipped to prove that the e-mail ad­dress­es are wrong and the con­tent false.Dr Row­ley, hav­ing been placed be­fore the Priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee, will have no oth­er choice but to clear his name and jus­ti­fy his ac­tions, but that does not re­lin­quish the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of the key of­fice-hold­ers who are the sub­ject of se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions in the e-mails to show that their re­spec­tive hands are clean.This is one time when the bur­den of proof is on both sides and the stan­dard for all in­volved is "be­yond rea­son­able doubt."