Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day in­sist­ed that the now in­fa­mous Dar­ryl Smith mat­ter is over and that he as Prime Min­is­ter had done all he could, in­clud­ing de­mot­ing and even­tu­al­ly dis­miss­ing Smith from his Cab­i­net.

The Prime Min­is­ter in­sist­ed he did not have the au­thor­i­ty to do any­thing else since his pow­er over Mr Smith stopped at the point of his mem­ber­ship of the Cab­i­net.

Dr Row­ley spoke about the is­sue in Par­lia­ment, re­ply­ing to Op­po­si­tion ques­tions on the sta­tus of in­ves­ti­ga­tions in­to the Dar­ryl­Smith mat­ter. Op­po­si­tion MP Rod­ney Charles sought an­swers, not­ing re­cent claims by a mem­ber of the in­ves­tiga­tive team who ac­cused two se­nior Cab­i­net mem­bers of misog­y­ny.

Gov­ern­ment ap­point­ed the team last year to look in­to for­mer Sports Min­istry em­ploy­ee Car­rie Ann More­au's ter­mi­na­tion and a $150,000 set­tle­ment. Al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment were in­volved and there was al­so the sign­ing of a non-dis­clo­sure agree­ment be­tween Ms More­au and the min­istry.

When the is­sue broke in April 2018, Dr Row­ley shift­ed Mr Smith to a ju­nior min­is­te­r­i­al po­si­tion then fired him from Gov­ern­ment a day af­ter claim­ing new in­for­ma­tion had sur­faced. He then ap­point­ed the probe team.

Their re­port was sub­mit­ted last year. In Oc­to­ber, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Dr Row­ley both said the re­port couldn't be used be­cause Mr Smith wasn't al­lowed to de­fend him­self. Row­ley yes­ter­day al­so said he knew of no one in the Cab­i­net who is guilty of misog­y­ny.

The Prime Min­is­ter seems to miss some cen­tral points that leave a bad taste in the mouths of cit­i­zens and for which his an­swers have so far not pro­vid­ed sig­nif­i­cant cause for com­fort nor clo­sure.

The fact is that to date the coun­try does not know the de­fin­i­tive sto­ry that led to the pay­out of $150,000 of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to set­tle a case brought by Ms More­au which in­clud­ed al­le­ga­tions of sex­u­al ha­rass­ment against the for­mer min­is­ter.

To date, the coun­try does not know when the Prime Min­is­ter first heard of the on­go­ings at the Min­istry, which from all ac­counts in­volved more than one se­nior pub­lic of­fi­cial and the Prime Min­is­ter's lawyer.

The coun­try does not know what ac­tions are in place to pre­vent a re­cur­rence of what is al­leged to have tak­en place and there has not been a re­al sense of out­rage or con­dem­na­tion of the be­hav­iour that led to the ac­tion by Ms More­au.

What is al­so un­ac­cept­able is that a probe was an­nounced and the find­ings found to be un­us­able and there ap­pears to be lit­tle or no ap­petite to de­ter­mine what hap­pened.

Mr Prime Min­is­ter the coun­try de­mands to know the truth about what hap­pened and how we goy to the pay­ment of $150,000 of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars to a cit­i­zen who made se­ri­ous al­le­ga­tions against a mem­ber of your par­lia­men­tary team.

To say he is no longer in gov­ern­ment so the mat­ter is closed is to be in­sen­si­tive to the con­cerns of cit­i­zens. How do we know that Mr Smith is not, in fact, a vic­tim? You se­lect­ed Mr Smith as part of your par­ty's process. You cam­paigned for him and you put him in your Cab­i­net. Was this an er­ror of judge­ment?

Con­tin­ued fail­ure to push for trans­paren­cy in this mat­ter will con­tin­ue to open you and your gov­ern­ment up to al­le­ga­tions of a cov­er-up.