As a re­spon­si­ble news­pa­per, we con­tin­ue to pledge our un­wa­ver­ing sup­port to the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment in the fight against crime.

We al­so ful­ly en­dorse and sup­port any and all ef­forts aimed at weed­ing out cor­rup­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly in high places.

This is why this week’s stun­ning rev­e­la­tion by our Prime Min­is­ter that two of this coun­try’s nine in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors had ap­proached her Gov­ern­ment seek­ing in­duce­ments, in or­der to sup­port its Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions (ZOSO) Bill, has giv­en us sig­nif­i­cant rea­son for pause.

In fact, we wish to use to­day’s ed­i­to­r­i­al to strong­ly urge the Prime Min­is­ter to com­plete­ly re­move the lid from her un­sub­stan­ti­at­ed claims by re­veal­ing not on­ly the names of these two ‘dis­hon­ourable’ Ho­n­ourable Mem­bers of the in­de­pen­dent bench – ap­point­ed by no less a per­son than Her Ex­cel­len­cy the Pres­i­dent – but al­so the full tran­scripts of the al­leged con­ver­sa­tions they had with un­named Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials so that this sor­did mat­ter can be re­solved to full ef­fect.

In our es­ti­ma­tion, any­thing short of this will not suf­fice, giv­en that the rep­u­ta­tions and in­tegri­ty of the nine peo­ple who now sit on the in­de­pen­dent bench­es have been brought in­to dis­re­pute and will re­main so un­til the cov­er is blown wide open.

Cer­tain­ly, peo­ple in high places can­not be shield­ed from fac­ing the con­se­quences of their al­leged crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ties.

Si­lence not on­ly stands in the way of law en­force­ment agen­cies be­ing able to in­ves­ti­gate these claims, but it al­so con­tributes to the un­fet­tered growth of a law­less cul­ture in our coun­try.

Fur­ther­more, it tar­nish­es our very po­lit­i­cal process, which is al­ready con­t­a­m­i­nat­ed by a per­sis­tent blame game which the two ma­jor par­ties have lib­er­al­ly used over decades to ex­cuse fail­ures of one kind or the oth­er, and in some in­stances shield them­selves from tak­ing full re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for their re­fusal to act in the best in­ter­est of the coun­try.

As a nat­ur­al corol­lary to such claims, politi­cians tend to throw in­to the po­lit­i­cal gayelle, suf­fi­cient fod­der for a par­ty’s fol­low­ers to en­gage in a pub­lic bat­tle that will be loaded with in­vec­tive, al­le­ga­tions of a dan­ger­ous kind and name-call­ing.

These dis­trac­tions aside, it is still hoped that the pro­posed ZOSO leg­is­la­tion can be re­viewed and wise­ly amend­ed with the in­put of all sides in the Sen­ate.

How­ev­er, Gov­ern­ment’s cur­rent re­fusal to open the agen­da to dis­course and log­i­cal agree­ment, which is a process at the core of par­lia­men­tary de­bate, is deeply re­gret­table.

In clos­ing off the de­bate, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie not­ed there were many qual­i­ty sug­ges­tions from the in­de­pen­dents to the now failed bill. How­ev­er, he al­so sug­gest­ed there was a lack of time to treat with the amend­ments, even though it is the Gov­ern­ment which sets the time frame for bring­ing the leg­is­la­tion to the Par­lia­ment.

Fol­low­ing Wednes­day’s de­feat of the leg­is­la­tion, we sin­cere­ly hope that Gov­ern­ment will re­con­sid­er its po­si­tion and bring the leg­is­la­tion back to the House, and take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion qual­i­ty sug­ges­tions which would make the bill “good law” to be used against crim­i­nal­i­ty.