AN ELASTIC APPROACH TO ETHICS

 So Dr. Rowley is back in the country and is operating as if his 3 week absence was no big thing and does not merit more than a line ("I was undergoing medical tests") of explanation. There was no report on his medical condition that necessitated a three week sojourn nor was there any attempt to say why these "tests" could not have been done in Trinidad. And a Prime Minister is no ordinary person. The country is entitled to know exactly what is or was wrong with him and what exactly caused his long absence.

In the meantime, and while he was away, it was revealed that one of his ministers was prevented from getting his Master's degree because he (Foster Cummings) had plagiarized certain content in his thesis. Mr. Cummings has said that this was simply an "oversight" on his part and that he had already explained that. But the fact is that he was still denied his degree and plagiarism is just about the most serious offence that one can commit in the academic world.  

Then (again while the Prime Minister was abroad) his brand new Attorney General is prevented from acting for and on behalf of the country in a case in the United States because he had acted for one of the defendants in a related matter some 14 or so years ago. The Attorney General offers as reasons that he did so was because he couldn't remember (although this had to be one of the biggest cases of his career) and he was abroad on holiday and didn't have his files with him and that he was prevented from filing an explanatory affidavit in the matter even though the Court records do not show that there was any explanation or attempt to file a supplemental/explanatory affidavit. An appeal has been filed, but one gets the most regrettable impression that this appeal is a losing one. But, we'll see.

Then there is the problem of abuse in children's homes across the country. This is being  (and has been for months) "investigated", but nobody has been charged as yet much less fired. And the PM's silence on this is deafening.

Then there is the problem of the investigation into the deaths of those divers at the beginning of this year. So far nothing has happened and there has been no explanation except that we are being told that the commission of enquiry will begin "soon". How soon is "soon" is, of course, another question altogether.

I could go on, but surely you the point: there seems to be in all of these matters (and more) a common thread which is a most elastic approach to ethics. The Prime Minister refuses to answer a journalist because of a 14 or 15 year old report and will not answer the reasonable question as to whether or not he had done due diligence on Mr. Armour which ought to have raised Mr. Armour's potential conflict of interest.

It is as though Dr. Rowley's ethics are governed by "do as I say, not as I do". If this is true then we have a serious problem because it would mean that the Prime Minister of Trinidad & Tobago is a big hypocrite. In the first world he would be fired for his most elastic approach to ethics.