PERCEPTIONS

 It is a truism that justice must not only be done, but it must SEEM to be done. Without the perception of justice being done, no matter how correct a decision or action is, if it is PERCIEVED to be unjust then it will be regarded as unjust and affected persons  (along with others in the society concerned with or about justice) will be clamoring for the decision or action to be overturned.

This is why the resignation of Mr. Eugene Tiah to resign from the committee to which he was asked to be a member of was the right one. I don't know Mr. Tiah. I have never met him and can say nothing about his moral character - good or bad. But when I read that in a rather contentious matter his two attorneys were Stuart Young (now the Minister of Energy) and Michael Quamina (now the Chairman of the State owned company that owns or controls Paria) I thought to myself 'Uh!Oh! There's potential here for a conflict of interest - or at least the PERCEPTION of a conflict and that the erstwhile Mr. Tiah should withdraw voluntarily from that committee - which to his credit, he did.

You see, it doesn't matter that Mr. Tiah may be a man of absolute integrity, his connections with the two very important officials is such that it would not have been unreasonable for right thinking persons in the society to raise their eyebrows, especially if the findings of the now defunct committee were such that the actions of all the Paria officials involved were such were found by the committee were correct.

In other words, there could have been a not unreasonable perception, that Mr. Tiah had used his position to influence the findings of the committee. Incidentally, except for the names and a few other changes, the same could have been said about the BP and Shell representatives.

A million years ago when I was a young lawyer, Mr. Martin Daly was acting as a temporary judge. I can't now remember the details, but a lawyer appearing before him raised an objection to Mr. Daly presiding over the matter because of an alleged bias. I don't remember what the objection was exactly but Mr. Daly, to what I deemed to be his great credit, refuted the allegations of bias BUT  then withdrew from the matter and sent it to another judge saying in effect that his reputation meant everything to him and that there could be a perception one way or the other (whichever way he ruled) that there was some truth in the allegation. I think that he was absolutely right and Mr. Daly deserved kudos for his stance. Mr. Daly was paying attention to the maxim of justice being PERCIEVED to be done.

I suppose (getting back the Paria imbroglio) that perhaps the perception of bias might have been able to have been avoided if the committee had announced that all of their deliberations would have been in public. But then that would have had the committee effectively acting as a commission of enquiry.

Frankly, if there was anyone to criticize it should be the Minister of Energy for recommending Mr. Tiah in the first place. I do understand that he has had (no doubt) a very good professional relationship with Mr. Tiah and respects him very much, but he should have known that that very relationship could give rise to a perception of bias and that Mr. Tiah's membership of that committee could have jeopardized both the findings of the committee as well as Mr. Tiah's reputation.

Certainly, on the face of it Paria has a lot of questions to answer. For example, in a newspaper advertisement Paria has said that the pipeline that the men were working on was not in use and therefore couldn't be turned on. Okay. But the question remains as to how the men got sucked into the pipe? Was there a giant sucking at the other end? But enough about the million and one questions that need to be answered. We (the general public and (more importantly) the families of the deceased men need to get a very clear picture of what exactly happened. And the perception of all right thinking peoples must be that whatever form the enquiry takes, that it's findings are correct and just.