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Wednesday, July 16, 2025

Evasion of truths

When will the night­mare end?

by

20150201

In any so­ci­ety, if pri­vate mo­ti­va­tions sac­ri­fice pub­lic in­ter­ests and if sleight of hand cor­rodes the moral fi­bre of in­sti­tu­tions of jus­tice, then the pil­lars that hold up sta­ble democ­ra­cies will crum­ble. There will be chaos. It is as if we are haunt­ed–haunt­ed by an evil phan­tom in the halls of in­sti­tu­tions of the peo­ple.

For near­ly five years, the Gov­ern­ment's J'Ou­vert band didn't stop dis­tract­ing it from the busi­ness of steer­ing the ship of state to its des­ti­na­tion. We don't know where that is, but know we want it an­chored in safe moor­ings.

We are a tol­er­ant, sen­si­tive, and po­lit­i­cal­ly trib­al peo­ple, who have of­ten side­stepped ob­jec­tiv­i­ty. We tend to over­look se­ri­ous er­rors of judge­ment by those in po­si­tions of trust, or just dis­miss their fail­ings de­pend­ing on trib­al af­fil­i­a­tion. So, the brand name for cor­rupt be­hav­iour be­came "mis­step," and we re­mained in de­nial that the pains we're ex­pe­ri­enc­ing are not grow­ing pains, but symp­toms of trick­ery, mis­man­age­ment, in­com­pe­tence and poor judge­ment.

But, civ­il so­ci­ety is be­gin­ning to take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the abu­sive per­for­mance of pub­lic of­fi­cials. We are pro­gress­ing not be­cause of what any gov­ern­ment has done, but be­cause of what gov­ern­ments have failed to do, which has spurred fed-up cit­i­zens to take the lead. In tak­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, they're not pre­pared to ac­cept eva­sion of truths.

The his­to­ry of this coun­try is not one where cit­i­zens have ever felt afraid to speak out and protest, to the cred­it of suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments. The po­lit­i­cal ole talk about cit­i­zens on­ly now feel­ing free to ven­ti­late is non­sense. They licked up Williams, in­sult­ed Cham­bers, blamed Robin­son for the at­tempt­ed coup, and beat-up Man­ning like a bobolee.

Since it came to of­fice, cit­i­zens have sig­nalled to the Gov­ern­ment their per­cep­tions of pre­vail­ing threats to the in­tegri­ty of pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions. Their voic­es were un­heed­ed and dis­missed with the clich�s: "He did noth­ing il­le­gal." "There's no ev­i­dence to take ac­tion." "It's op­po­si­tion pol­i­tics." "They want to bring down the Gov­ern­ment"...un­til the me­dia dug up facts, and the pub­lic de­mand­ed ac­tion.

Cit­i­zens have con­tin­u­ous­ly con­demned un­pro­fes­sion­al be­hav­iour of Cab­i­net min­is­ters, yet the con­duc­tor played on un­til every­thing hit the fan. It start­ed with the breach of Par­lia­ment's Eth­i­cal Code of Con­duct back in 2010. Then a forged re­sume to com­pro­mise a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty po­si­tion, un­sat­is­fac­to­ry ex­pla­na­tions for the state of emer­gency, and more fraud­u­lent re­sumes by in­com­pe­tent board mem­bers of pub­lic com­pa­nies.

Like a thief in the night, came the procla­ma­tion of Sec­tion 34–a clause that guar­an­teed the non-pros­e­cu­tion of al­leged fraud­sters who were al­so cam­paign fi­nanciers. It was a slick sleight of hand leav­ing well-in­ten­tioned and trust­ing law­mak­ers com­pro­mised.

Ul­ti­mate­ly, they were re­spon­si­ble for that law.

The six mil­lion dol­lars to hoist up a fall­en fire truck was symp­to­matic of sys­temic cor­rup­tion. Abus­ing sys­tems to pur­chase a Range Rover, an un­re­solved email­gate probe, an il­le­gal fly­ing squad, pris­ongate, the trau­ma of a So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al, and forg­ing of a press re­lease are all un­healed scars. Over $600 mil­lion wast­ed in the Life­S­port scan­dal. And in be­tween all of these events, were a se­ries of oth­er crooked steps and al­le­ga­tions of wide­spread cor­rup­tion. In time, the in­creas­ing cost of the Pt Fortin High­way will be re­vealed.

Still, the con­duc­tor con­tin­ued to play while the Gov­ern­ment choir sang songs about the cor­rup­tion un­der the last regime. In oth­er words, why shouldn't we thief too. These sce­nar­ios go be­yond the pale of mere al­le­ga­tions.

Now play­ing in the pub­lic the­atre is al­leged tam­per­ing of a wit­ness by one of the most se­nior gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials. Not to be out­done, the opera be­came fren­zied as the in­tegri­ty of Par­lia­ment was again drawn in­to the or­ches­tra pit. When will the night­mare end?As a mat­ter of pri­or­i­ty, cit­i­zens want con­sci­en­tious­ness in pro­tect­ing the in­tegri­ty of pub­lic of­fices.

They want spon­tane­ity by of­fi­cials in ad­her­ing to the prin­ci­ple of step­ping aside dur­ing in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions in or­der to pre­serve the in­tegri­ty of pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions and pub­lic con­fi­dence. It's one way to pre-empt wrong­do­ing and al­low in­ves­ti­ga­tions to pro­ceed un­fet­tered.

It is the con­duc­tor who is ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble for per­for­mance of the dis­cor­dant or­ches­tra. As said, this is a po­lit­i­cal­ly sen­si­tive so­ci­ety who would eas­i­ly be­lieve that pre-emp­tive ac­tion is not tak­en when nec­es­sary to pre­serve pub­lic con­fi­dence, but rather, on­ly when it is po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­pe­di­ent.

Grant­ed, the con­duc­tor has walked a step fur­ther than her pre­de­ces­sors. She has dis­missed sev­er­al of her min­is­ters–per­haps, too many to feel com­fort­able about judge­ment in the first place. That aside, the fact is she even­tu­al­ly took ac­tion.

The coun­try de­serves a gov­ern­ment that will ex­plore com­plex is­sues and make wise de­ci­sions; that acts in the pub­lic's in­ter­est and builds pub­lic con­fi­dence. There's a void in crit­i­cal­ly think­ing through prob­lems and the log­i­cal con­se­quences flow­ing from de­ci­sions. It is as though the phan­tom turns off the lights leav­ing the or­ches­tra in dark­ness.There's light with the awak­en­ing of civ­il so­ci­ety, and op­por­tu­ni­ties to bring about change.


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