The most im­por­tant char­ac­ter­is­tics to be dis­played by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh and the High­way Re-Route Move­ment af­ter Wednes­day's agree­ment are in­tegri­ty and com­mit­ment. The terms of the agree­ment struck be­tween the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil (JCC) and its as­so­ci­at­ed civ­il-so­ci­ety groups and the Min­istry of Works on be­half of the Gov­ern­ment are clear.

Stip­u­lat­ed in the terms, and out­lined in a JCC press re­lease and signed on to in a frame­work agree­ment on Mon­day by the Min­is­ter of Works, is a com­pre­hen­sive re­view of all of the mat­ters un­der is­sue. Ad­di­tion­al­ly, the agree­ment al­lows for in­put and in­ter­ven­tion not on­ly by the HRM but any oth­er in­di­vid­ual or group with a point of view to pro­pose.

Last week such an agree­ment seemed im­pos­si­ble as Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the most se­nior of her min­is­ters were then wag­ing a bat­tle against Dr Kublals­ingh and the HRM. The agree­ment has now been com­mu­ni­cat­ed to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty through news­pa­per and elec­tron­ic me­dia re­ports in front all of T&T and the watch­ing world.

That is not a po­si­tion from which the Gov­ern­ment, Dr Kublals­ingh, the HRM and the oth­ers can re­coil. The pop­u­la­tion will not tol­er­ate fan­cy foot­work or glib tongues on ei­ther side at­tempt­ing to si­dle out of the agree­ment be­fore or af­ter the re­port has been pro­duced. The agree­ment holds fast to the prin­ci­ple of par­tic­i­pa­to­ry Gov­ern­ment, a prin­ci­ple of gov­er­nance that has been sad­ly ab­sent in this coun­try.

When par­ties win pow­er in an elec­tion, vic­to­ry is trans­lat­ed to mean an un­tram­melled right on the part of the elect­ed Gov­ern­ment to do as it pleas­es with the re­sources and peo­ple of a coun­try for five years, with­out ref­er­ence to the pop­u­la­tion. But fi­nal­ly, de­spite the seem­ing­ly en­trenched po­si­tions of both sides, an ac­cept­able com­pro­mise has been reached.

It is al­so en­cour­ag­ing that the two sides have placed faith in the in­tegri­ty and pro­fes­sion­al­ism of In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor Dr James Arm­strong, a de­vel­op­ment plan­ner, to chair a group of like-mind­ed pro­fes­sion­als to do the re­view and pro­duce the re­port. Im­por­tant­ly, when fin­ished, the re­port is to be put be­fore the bar of pub­lic opin­ion be­fore a col­lec­tive de­ter­mi­na­tion is made on how to go for­ward.

Not even the staunchest de­fend­er of com­mu­ni­ty and in­di­vid­ual rights has been able to raise a cred­i­ble ar­gu­ment against pro­ceed­ing with con­nect­ing San Fer­nan­do (and by ex­ten­sion the rest of the coun­try) with Point Fortin. The un­doubt­ed hu­man, so­cial and eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to ac­crue over the long term from such mod­ern road con­nec­tions will ex­tend to gen­er­a­tions in­to the fu­ture.

With­out at­tempt­ing to an­tic­i­pate the find­ings of the re­view com­mit­tee, it would be fair to say that the re­view must throw up what are the best hu­man, en­vi­ron­men­tal, eco­nom­ic and fi­nan­cial op­tions for link­ing the high­way in the Debe–Mon De­sir area. Dr Kublals­ingh's will­ing­ness to sac­ri­fice his per­son­al health and well-be­ing, even when his clos­est rel­a­tives were beg­ging him to step back from the brink, marks him off as an un­usu­al man.

Dr Kublals­ingh's in­sis­tence on and his com­mit­ment to hav­ing sci­en­tif­ic and hu­man con­cerns, along with fi­nan­cial in­tegri­ty, in­vest­ed in the con­struc­tion ef­fort are en­tire­ly in keep­ing with the prin­ci­ples enun­ci­at­ed by the 2012 Trans­paren­cy In­ter­na­tion­al re­port.

His mo­tives can be seen, even by those who con­sid­er his meth­ods mis­guid­ed, as be­ing based not on the hope of per­son­al gain but in­sis­tence on hon­esty, open­ness and ac­count­abil­i­ty. In those re­spects, at least, this coun­try needs more of his kind in pub­lic life.