DR HAMID GHANY

The per­son­al de­ci­sion by Ken Gor­don in his ca­pac­i­ty as chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to meet pri­vate­ly at his home with Dr Kei­th Row­ley has been iden­ti­fied as be­ing an er­ror by many of those who have spo­ken pub­licly on the mat­ter.For some it was a mi­nor er­ror and for oth­ers it was ma­jor. The con­sen­sus of opin­ion is that it was wrong.

How­ev­er, Gor­don felt that he did the right thing ow­ing to the fact that Row­ley de­fined the need for his meet­ing as be­ing ur­gent. The de­bate that has erupt­ed over this has cre­at­ed a firestorm of con­tro­ver­sy pri­mar­i­ly be­cause the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is a qua­si-ju­di­cial body and not your av­er­age pub­lic body.The most trou­bling as­pect of this en­tire episode has been the wide­spread si­lence of the tra­di­tion­al pres­sure groups and com­men­ta­tors who would oth­er­wise have com­ment­ed on a mat­ter as fun­da­men­tal as this. What has hap­pened?

There is no doubt that Ken Gor­don is very well con­nect­ed in the cor­po­rate and so­cial world of this coun­try and the re­gion. Those con­nec­tions cut through many of the groups and or­gan­i­sa­tions that would nor­mal­ly vil­i­fy peo­ple in pub­lic life for any in­frac­tions that they may com­mit. Such peo­ple would fit in­to a cat­e­go­ry of "oth­er less­er mor­tals" for whom there are no ex­cep­tions to the rules which cre­ate one set for the so­cial­ly con­nect­ed and an­oth­er for the rest.

To think that bod­ies like the lo­cal branch of Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al or the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce would re­main silent on this is­sue, one way or the oth­er, is baf­fling.

In a re­lease on the Sec­tion 34 con­tro­ver­sy on Sep­tem­ber 19, 2012, the Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce said, in­ter alia: "Many of the chal­lenges faced by T&T with­in re­cent years which have im­pact­ed on our coun­try's com­pet­i­tive­ness, have been un­der­pinned by re­peat­ing themes of the need for good gov­er­nance and trans­paren­cy, par­tic­u­lar­ly by pub­lic of­fi­cials. There­fore, the cham­ber will con­tin­ue to call for the high­est ideals and val­ues of good gov­er­nance and trans­paren­cy that is ex­pect­ed of our gov­ern­ment."

These are in­deed lofty goals as­so­ci­at­ed with the de­sire of the cham­ber to see "good gov­er­nance and trans­paren­cy" up­held by pub­lic of­fi­cials.So what hap­pened here? Did Ken Gor­don's se­cret meet­ing with Dr Row­ley not rise to the stan­dard laid out by the cham­ber last year on the Sec­tion 34 is­sue? New facts have emerged, and the meet­ing be­tween Gor­don and Row­ley had every­thing to do with Sec­tion 34. Why was the cham­ber so vo­cal last year and so silent now?

On the same date as the Cham­ber of Com­merce state­ment last year, a joint state­ment was is­sued by the JCC, TT­TI, Fix­in' T&T, Fi­tun and the TTMA which said, in­ter alia: "Fur­ther to the procla­ma­tion and sub­se­quent re­peal of Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act 2011 and the en­su­ing dam­age to pub­lic con­fi­dence aris­ing from both ac­tions, it is crit­i­cal that Gov­ern­ment take im­me­di­ate steps to re­store that trust in pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion which is es­sen­tial for good or­der in our so­ci­ety."

This sounds so good, yet when faced with a clear and present er­ror of judg­ment from the chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in­volv­ing the very same Sec­tion 34 mat­ter, they have cho­sen to re­main silent with the ex­cep­tion of one com­ment about an elu­sive board meet­ing that may or may not have been held and an­oth­er wait­ing for more facts.

Their si­lence is trou­bling as this is still a Sec­tion 34 mat­ter that does not put the Gov­ern­ment in the seat of er­ror.

These bod­ies have al­ways prid­ed them­selves on their abil­i­ty to play the watch­dog role in so­ci­ety. What has hap­pened is that they cre­at­ed a so­ci­etal dead zone in which the very con­cerns they raised last year about the Sec­tion 34 mat­ter can­not get sim­i­lar treat­ment this year, per­haps be­cause the Gov­ern­ment is not in­volved in this lat­est con­tro­ver­sy. This is a mat­ter that in­volves the Op­po­si­tion and the chair­man of a qua­si-ju­di­cial body and not the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and the Prime Min­is­ter.

Their si­lence con­veys a po­lit­i­cal pref­er­ence or a bias to pro­tect so­cial and cor­po­rate in­ter­ests to which they may be linked.The deep­er prob­lem is the fact that their si­lence re­moves the out­rage that would oth­er­wise ac­com­pa­ny their in­ter­ven­tion where oth­er peo­ple are con­cerned.

One won­ders whether the fact that the Prime Min­is­ter, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and some oth­er min­is­ters in the Cab­i­net are not in­volved here, and that they do not be­long to the same cor­po­rate and so­cial net­works as Ken Gor­don and some of the lead­ers of these pres­sure groups, could ex­plain why this seems like the si­lence of the lambs.

Is this the kind of rea­son­ing that could help us ex­plain why there is di­vi­sion and am­biva­lence on the ac­ces­sion to the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice by many and that there is no burn­ing pub­lic de­sire to let the Privy Coun­cil go? Some­thing to think about.