Melis­sa Williams-Sam­bra­no

The Trinidad and To­ba­go Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute (TT­TI) broke its si­lence yes­ter­day on an al­leged sex­u­al ha­rass­ment mat­ter in­volv­ing a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, say­ing that there ap­peared to have been se­ri­ous laps­es, mis­steps and mis­judge­ments which led to the present con­tro­ver­sy.

Al­though the in­sti­tute did not name the for­mer min­is­ter, the mat­ter in­volv­ing for­mer Min­is­ter of Sport Dar­ryl Smith has been en­gag­ing na­tion­al at­ten­tion.

In a state­ment, the TT­TI said it has ob­served with con­cern, the un­fold­ing se­ries of events sur­round­ing claims of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment and wrong­ful ter­mi­na­tion in­volv­ing a for­mer min­is­ter of sport and his per­son­al as­sis­tant.

It said to ad­dress the ap­par­ent gov­er­nance deficit be­ing dis­played with this mat­ter and to en­sure lessons are learnt, it is ask­ing sev­er­al ques­tions in­clud­ing who was re­spon­si­ble for ad­dress­ing the is­sue at the min­istry of sport when the sex­u­al ha­rass­ment is­sue was first raised, the process of ter­mi­na­tion and why as a non-dis­clo­sure arrange­ment used and last­ly what ac­tion is be­ing tak­en in the min­istry of sport and oth­er min­istries to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of this sit­u­a­tion?

The in­sti­tute added that good gov­er­nance must be char­ac­terised by full dis­clo­sure to the pub­lic on mat­ters in­volv­ing pub­lic in­sti­tu­tions, pub­lic funds and ethics in gov­er­nance.

It al­so stressed that the na­tion’s youth “ob­serve and mim­ic our lead­ers; hence, our lead­ers must al­ways strive to lead with in­tegri­ty”. That it said pro­duces ex­cel­lence in lead­er­ship and, as fa­mous­ly stat­ed: “The great­est ex­am­ple of lead­er­ship is lead­er­ship by ex­am­ple.”

The state­ment added that the TT­TI seeks to en­sure good gov­er­nance, ac­count­abil­i­ty, in­tegri­ty and trans­paren­cy in all mat­ters of pub­lic in­ter­est as these prin­ci­ples rep­re­sent the main pil­lars of a democ­ra­cy and must be sup­port­ed and pro­tect­ed at all cost.