If Monday's Shaliza Hassanali story on the possible fate of the Chaguaramas Convention Centre brought out one single point it would be that in T&T, in 2016, it is possible for a public property, including one of some considerable public significance, to be leased to someone in 2014 and the identity of such an investor can remain unknown after all of two years.
Political partisans are quick to jump to vocal judgment on such episodes to claim some degree of one-upmanship. But it is clear that the culture of official secrecy crosses the political divide and is endemic to our social and political culture.
I would like to understand, both from CDA chairman, Anthony Pierre and former minister, Dr Bhoe Tewarie precisely why the name of the lessee remains such a closely-guarded secret. I am open to any reasonable explanation, but I cannot recall one being offered. This, to me, is probably as important as the identity of the investor, because my concern on this matter goes beyond the CDA fiasco.
The fact is, in our country, even when secrecy is not called for, it becomes an official default.
Two weeks ago, I focused on the abrogation of a level of personal secrecy in instances when public officials are involved and, in that regard, I believe the prime minister did the correct thing upon his return from recent travel. The threshold (and there remains one) for what he considers to be his "private business" changed a long time ago when he aspired to and achieved public office.
With respect to official information, I am quite aware of the requirement to assure the integrity of data related to national security and public records that might be subject to personal privacy issues, including the medical records of ordinary folk.
But, let me cite one ridiculous example of the secrecy default. Some years ago, I attempted to get for some material I was putting together, the date of birth of a particular government minister.
The ministry website did not have it. I called Government Information Division, as I think it was then. Zero. Then I decided to call the minister himself, only to be intercepted by someone from his office who told me that in order to get such information, I needed to write the permanent secretary formally requesting the information.
Now, this was Trinidad and Tobago some years after passage of the Freedom of Information Act in 1999. And I remember the public consultations on the Bill very well. In fact, I had been chided by a senior executive of the media house I worked for then for being "overly aggressive" when my turn on the floor came as a representative of the Media Association.
My point then, and it remains so to this day, is that unless we find a way to deal with broader societal commitment to this culture of secrecy, no amount of legislation will take us to the point of official information becoming a reliable source of knowledge which, in turn, would have the subversive effect of challenging many other things around us.
An appetite for sharing information, as is the case with personal tastes, cannot be legislated. It has to be integrated through a process of education into the consciousness of people who might not in the first place understand why it is important to be empowered with knowledge and information.
I know this as a journalist in the business for over 30 years that among the things for which we are not always the most popular is the belief that we are recklessly and irritatingly concerned with overturning every stone in order to accumulate news and information about the things around us.
Since his famous speech before a World Bank audience in 1997, I have not forgotten the words of former United Nations Secretary-General, Kofi Annan who described knowledge as power and information as "liberating."
On the eve of our presumed national independence, we would do well to remember this.
Then we need to position this discussion alongside the creeping incursions of the state into our private business. We had this discussion before concerning the Strategic Services Agency (SSA) Act when I said the vigorous debate on personal privacy ought to have started as far back as the introduction of the Interception of Communications Act.
This is not antithetical to the argument for greater official disclosure. It is not hypocritical to see one as desirable and the other dangerous. Official disclosure and personal privacy are only related in the Orwellian sense of an impregnable omniscient superstructure seeking to preside over a compliant, translucent horde.
I am also not unduly beating up on offices of the state and remaining blind to the degree to which this culture of secrecy does not also infect the professions and the corporate world–the operations of which have deep implications for the well-being of a variety of social stakeholders.
In this event, corporate legislation ought to increasingly open the windows on the dark corners of business operations in our country and insist on greater levels of transparency, particularly when public investments and the well-being of people are involved.
In the meantime, let's have another look at our Freedom of Information Act to see whether it indeed is, as it explicitly proposes, "guided by the principle of maximum disclosure." We appear to be light years away from that in both the spirit and the letter of the law, if only because it is something in which we truly do not believe.