Express editorial
A rush to judgmentFriday, October 3rd 2008
House Speaker Barry Sinanan, by now, must be ruing his decision to open the way for the Prime Minister to have unlimited speaking time at last Tuesday's parliamentary session. Mr Manning, after all, used the extra time not to speak on any matter of national importance but to continue his political attack against his former deputy, Dr Keith Rowley, and malign Siparia MP, Kamla Persad-Bissessar.
Mr Manning is entitled to attack any politician he likes but what he is not entitled to do is to abuse the precious privilege he was granted as Prime Minister simply to score points against a former PNM colleague now turned rival, the Prime Minister's angst going back as far as 1996 when Dr Rowley battled against him for the party's political leadership. Driven by what seems to be a desire to get Dr Rowley at all costs and to poison the political waters of Mrs Persad-Bissessar, Mr Manning not only disgraced himself in the Parliament but, unwittingly, hung himself out to dry. Having seen Dr Rowley not only beat back but overturn allegations against him raised via the Integrity Commission, Mr Manning - congenitally unable to accept the courts' ruling as vindication of one of his former deputies - now sought to wound him by loaded innuendo. On the basis of a $10,000,000 financial discrepancy, which he claimed to have discovered with regard to the Cleaver Heights Housing Project on the very day of the particular House sitting, Mr Manning, using his extended parliamentary time, all but pointed a finger at Dr Rowley because, according to him, he had been unable to find answers to the resulting question raised in his mind. But whom did he ask before his own questionable rush to anti-Rowley judgment? Certainly not the then-chairman of the Housing Development Corporation or its then-manager in the persons of Messrs Andre Monteil and Noel Garcia, respectively. Because if he did, wouldn't' their replies have influenced his House disposition?
Secondly, how are the serving members of the Integrity Commission now to view their tenancy in the face of the Prime Minister's admission to having monitored for years a supposed relationship between Mrs Persad-Bissessar and one of their own, the relationship leading to Mrs Persad-Bissessar having confidential information - enough, it seems, to have caused any number of worthy citizens to refuse appointments to State boards?
Absurd? Farcical? Jokey, at the very least? But if you use any of these adjectives to describe the Prime Minister's extended political posturing you would have missed the point which is that either increasingly unbridled power or a pernicious yearning for it has wrecked both the man's sense of propriety and his connection with reality. For Trinidad and Tobago what else does that spell but more trouble? As such, Mr Manning's allegations cannot be allowed to rest but must be pursued to the very end with the chips being allowed to fall freely wherever they may.
Guardian editorialOctober 3, 2008
Parliament must enlighten
Why engage the Parliament in such an unsubstantiated allegation and, more than that, why trade on a privileged position in the chamber to insinuate in such a manner—surely no one was fooled by his pretence of not making an allegation—without presenting the evidence?
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It is too often the case that what should be an engaging, enlightening and uplifting debate in the House of Representatives on fundamental issues, such as the national budget, degenerates into personal attacks.
These attacks are sometimes against people not able to defend themselves with such freedom as the parliamentarians enjoy against mauvais langue and partisan party politics.
The end result is blissful ignorance of the issues involved in the debate by the national community and the continuing slide in the credibility of the Parliament.
It is clear that both sides in the verbal duel between the Prime Minister and his former colleague, Dr Keith Rowley, must share some of the blame for the fact that much of the debate got side-tracked.
On Tuesday night, what Prime Minister Patrick Manning had to “reveal,” using what he described as documentary evidence, amounted in the instance of his contentions against his former colleague of 20 years, no more than weak circumstantial evidence of alleged corruption.
If the Prime Minister really thinks he has evidence of one of his ministers feeding at the public trough, why did he not place the matter in the hands of the investigating authorities to pursue? Why engage the Parliament in such an unsubstantiated allegation and, more than that, why trade on a privileged position in the chamber to insinuate in such a manner—surely no one was fooled by his pretence of not making an allegation—without presenting the evidence? Moreover, it stretches credibility for the Prime Minister to come months, perhaps even years, after an event involving, as he claims, $10 million of public funds gone missing, to “discover” it in a document that one has to assume was always available to him.
This discovery is also an indictment of the scrutiny by Cabinet before approval is granted for the expenditure of large sums of taxpayers’ dollars.
How could Cabinet have allowed such a simple arithmetical error, as indicated by the Prime Minister, to get by it?
Is it that the Cabinet gives the green light to any document that comes before it without the appropriate scrutiny?
The Prime Minister is therefore demonstrating the shortcomings of his own administration more than supporting the possibility of alleged corruption by a former member of the Cabinet. How many other instances of discrepancy and possible outright corruption have got past the Cabinet? That is a question that requires an answer from Mr Manning.
In the instance of the Prime Minister’s allegations against UNC MP Kamla Persad-Bissessar and her alleged links to a member of the Integrity Commission, here again is an instance of the potential commission of a crime as it is illegal for a member of the commission to engage in the business of the institution with others outside.
Armed with such information, as he claims he has, why has the Prime Minister not put the information in the hands of the police for further investigation? Why has he kept it to use as political ammunition against his opponents?
Questions might also be raised about how the Prime Minister came upon the information about the alleged link between Mrs Persad-Bissessar and someone associated with the Integrity Commission. Is it that the country’s intelligence services were instructed to monitor the private activities of an Opposition MP and her association with the Integrity Commission, an institution that is supposed to be free of the taint of partisan politics?
Would it not have been the preferred course of action for the Prime Minister to pass on his suspicions to the chairman of the Integrity Commission for him to order the investigations required?