As has be­come typ­i­cal in our beloved twin-is­land re­pub­lic, may­hem, char­ac­ter as­sas­si­na­tion, par­tial­i­ty, pre­judg­ment, and con­dem­na­tion in the form of be­ing sent to the gal­lows be­fore the case is heard is the or­der of the day-our defin­ing marks, our watch­words and our na­tion­al em­blems. The new fi­as­co that seems to be blow­ing out of pro­por­tion and be­ing ex­ac­er­bat­ed with­out any­one try­ing to get to the crux or the core of the facts, is the im­broglio be­tween In­tegri­ty Chair­man Com­mis­sion, Ken Gor­don and Deputy Chair­per­son, Jus­tice Gladys Gafoor. Let us get the ba­sics of this and I en­cour­age any cit­i­zen, to re­spond to this and let us get all the facts be­fore we fur­ther dam­age or sul­ly peo­ple's rep­u­ta­tion.

Some­time in May 2010, we know that a com­plaint was made to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion by a mem­ber of the pub­lic against For­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, John Je­re­mie, SC. Ac­cord­ing to me­dia re­ports and what was said in the dailies, the mat­ter in­volv­ing Se­nior Coun­sel John Je­re­mie was for­ward­ed to a for­eign ex­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tor. Has this ex­ter­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tor re­port­ed back to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion? Mr Gor­don just as­sumed the man­tle of Chair­man of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion(Ap­point­ed on Oc­to­ber 28th, 2011). Did any of Mr Gor­don's pre­de­ces­sors re­ceive any ob­jec­tion to Jus­tice Gafoor be­ing part of the de­lib­er­a­tion con­cern­ing Mr Jer­mie? Did Mr Je­re­mie lodge a com­plaint be­fore ob­ject­ing to any com­mis­sion­ers be­ing on his mat­ter pri­or to Mr Gor­don's ar­rival?

What were the ur­gent/crit­i­cal is­sues that arose af­ter Oc­to­ber 2011 war­rant­i­ng that two Com­mis­sion­ers Mr Se­u­nar­ine Jokhoo and Gladys Gafoor re­cuse them­selves from this sit­u­a­tion that was not there for the past 15 months? My re­search on the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act 2000 states that at least one mem­ber of the Com­mis­sion must be a prac­tic­ing At­tor­ney of at least 10 years and an­oth­er mem­ber must be a char­tered or cer­ti­fied ac­coun­tant. Jus­tice Gladys Gafoor is then the ju­di­cial of­fi­cer and Mr Jokhoo is the ac­coun­tant on the Com­mis­sion. What hap­pens if these two are re­cused in terms of the Act's re­quire­ments with Board Com­po­si­tion?

The fi­nal thing to con­sid­er is this whole no­tion of per­cep­tion by the com­plainants and I mean com­plainants in gen­er­al. To be a dev­il's ad­vo­cate, let us look at the cur­rent sit­u­a­tion, the re­quest is for Madam Gafoor and Mr Jokhoo to not de­lib­er­ate in this mat­ter be­cause of the "per­ceived bias' they may pos­sess to­wards the sub­ject of this mat­ter-Mr Je­re­mie and may be seen to un­fair­ly de­cide up­on his fate. Sim­i­lar­ly, one may jump in the fray and say that the in­cum­bent Chair­man-Ken Gor­don should re­cuse him­self as well be­cause he may be seen as be­ing favourable to Mr Je­re­mie based on sev­er­al past sit­u­a­tions-name­ly, he had a court case against For­mer UNC Po­lit­i­cal Leader and Prime Min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day and they were known to have a bit­ter re­la­tion­ship; Mr Gor­don was al­so ap­point­ed un­der the Man­ning regime to spear­head a com­mit­tee to fight crime and they de­vel­oped a 21 point crime plan back in 2003. One could then say that he is more aligned to the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment; In ad­di­tion, Dou­glas Mendes, SC has known to have a great re­la­tion­ship with Mr Ken Gor­don. Se­nior Coun­sel Mendes has been used by the for­mer regime to rep­re­sent the state in many cas­es and works very close­ly with Se­nior Coun­sel Je­re­mie.

I say all of this be­cause the ques­tion must be asked: "When we say that per­cep­tion be­comes re­al­i­ty and peo­ple must feel men­tal­ly com­fort­ed that the ad­ju­di­ca­tors are im­par­tial", what hap­pens in cas­es like this with Chair­man Ken Gor­don and Deputy Chair­man Gafoor? It be­comes a clas­sic case of see­ing the glass as "ei­ther half emp­ty or half full". To some in the pub­lic and Mr Je­re­mie, they be­lieve that a fair ad­ju­di­ca­tion will on­ly oc­cur if Jus­tice Gafoor and Mr Jukhoo are not par­tic­i­pants. To oth­ers , they be­lieve that for no "ap­par­ent fa­voritism" to ex­ist to­wards Mr Je­re­mie, then Mr Ken Gor­don should al­so re­cuse him­self. Please mem­bers of the pub­lic-pro­vide feed­back!

Mau­ry Kamin­s­ki

Via e-mail