Sat Ma­haraj

There is a be­lief in our so­ci­ety that when­ev­er a pub­lic of­fi­cial is found to be in­com­pe­tent in the per­for­mance of his or her du­ties, he or she is pro­mot­ed to a post where their lack of skill is less no­tice­able.Over the years this be­lief has been ex­pand­ed to in­clude sit­u­a­tions where a pub­lic of­fi­cial is per­ceived to be act­ing too late or not at all. Such a per­son is sim­ply trans­ferred to an­oth­er post or al­so pro­mot­ed.

In the re­cent high­ly-pub­li­cised e-mail scan­dal, pur­port­ed­ly in­volv­ing sev­er­al gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, there was talk that DPP Roger Gas­pard, SC, would be made a judge of the High Court. Some be­lieve that his pre­de­ces­sor, Jus­tice Ge­of­frey Hen­der­son, was ap­point­ed a judge fol­low­ing sev­er­al clash­es be­tween him and the Man­ning regime.

We know that it is the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion which is re­spon­si­ble for the ap­point­ment of judges and not the Ex­ec­u­tive, but these ref­er­ences il­lus­trate the re­al be­lief of the man on the street: a se­nior pub­lic ser­vant or even Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions be­come tar­gets for pro­mo­tion should the politi­cian view them as im­ped­i­ments.For my part, I hope that these be­liefs are on­ly myths and noth­ing more.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers