I am be­com­ing quite fed-up with the knee-jerk re­ac­tion to se­ri­ous is­sues in the pub­lic do­main. Mil­lions of dol­lars in pub­lic funds have been squan­dered or care­less­ly spent with noth­ing pro­found or mean­ing­ful shown for it.I have sat silent­ly for the past 15 years and watched pub­lic fig­ures abuse their pow­er and au­thor­i­ty and spend pub­lic funds with­out due dili­gence. From the air­port fi­as­co un­der the Bas­deo Pan­day ad­min­is­tra­tion to the Cli­co fi­as­co, to the church at Gua­napo Heights, to the Tarou­ba sta­di­um, to NA­PA, to the Sports Com­pa­ny, to UTT, and the list goes on.This coun­try has host­ed in­nu­mer­able sum­mits and dined and wined the finest for­eign­ers at the Hy­att. I get po­lit­i­cal nau­sea and di­ar­rhoea just think­ing about the sur­re­al na­ture of how we have sat down as a so­ci­ety and al­lowed such deca­dent and vil­lain­ous be­hav­iour to be the or­der of the day.At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan is no fan of mine but I have to say he has tak­en a brave, bold and com­mend­able step to ad­dress al­leged mis­con­duct in pub­lic of­fice by some who pre­vi­ous­ly held the reins of com­mand. Cer­tain bod­ies act with alacrity when it comes to cer­tain politi­cians yet re­main im­po­tent and dor­mant when it comes to oth­ers who need to be held ac­count­able.

I am go­ing to hold this Gov­ern­ment and the AG to their word as promised on the cam­paign trail and in their man­i­festo to ini­ti­ate le­gal pro­ceed­ings against those who have been neg­li­gent or failed to ex­er­cise due dili­gence when spend­ing state funds.Mean­while, I humbly ask Prof Ken Julien, for­mer chair­man of Evolv­ing Tec­knolo­gies and En­ter­prise De­vel­op­ment Co Ltd, to ex­plain why the com­pa­ny didn't heed the ad­vice of the Min­istry of Fi­nance and the tech­nocrats with re­gard to in­vest­ing $30 mil­lion in a Hong Kong-based com­pa­ny.Fur­ther, if it was such a sound in­vest­ment, please tell the na­tion what hap­pened to the $30 mil­lion or what ben­e­fits has the in­vest­ment giv­en to this na­tion.Al­so, for­mer Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port Colm Im­bert has to ex­plain why the ves­sel MV Su was pur­chased, a ves­sel that cost $50.1 mil­lion and need­ed a fur­ther $14.1 mil­lion to re­pair and which the Gov­ern­ment was ad­vised was worth no more than US$4.3 mil­lion. Fur­ther, it must be ex­plained why the ves­sel was pur­chased in light of the bleak and poor con­di­tion that it was in, it need­ing se­ri­ous re­pairs that would cost an as­tro­nom­i­cal sum of mon­ey.The MV Su un­der­went re­pairs in Cu­ra­cao then was shipped to Ch­aguara­mas in De­cem­ber 2008. The ves­sel has been docked since and has been ren­dered un­ser­vice­able.I ask any right-mind­ed think­ing in­di­vid­ual, shouldn't some­body be held ac­count­able for this? As the old peo­ple say: "If you do noth­ing, then you have noth­ing to fear."This coun­try has ex­pe­ri­enced too much wastage of pub­lic funds and in­vest­ment of pub­lic funds that leave a whole lot to be de­sired. The buck has to stop some­where and I think that it has stopped with the AG. I ask him to con­tin­ue on. Nev­er mind his crit­ics be­cause the adage says: "Damned if you do, damned if you don't."