Monday, March 6, 2023

A MILLION ACCUSATIONS AND NO PROOF OF ANYTHING

 Tell me something: how many people in T&T do YOU think actually believe that our leaders in offices that are supposed to be non-political, are in fact non-political and who make their decisions on strictly non-political terms. These offices (e.g., the office of the President, the Chief Justice, the Director of Public Prosecutions, the Commissioner of Police , the Registrar of the Supreme Court etc.) are supposed to be strictly non-political. We are therefore supposed to trust that whatever decision  a holder of one of these offices makes is certainly not tainted with any type of political flavour. 

And you have only got to look at it to understand why this ought to be so.  All of these offices carry with them enormous power and a biased holder of such an office can do enormous damage to an individual citizen who is challenging the Government of the day and who will have a really hard (and expensive) time in correcting whatever decision was made against him/her.

So it was with not little consternation that I read in the news that the case against Mr. Basdeo Panday - a former Prime Minister - was dropped apparently for lack of evidence. Why? The newspaper report says that it was because some witnesses are now dead while others have migrated and as a result the case against Mr. Panday is now very weak. But, Hello! Was the case ever a strong one? If so, why then was it never brought to trial? And where does the dropping of this case against Mr. Panday leave him now? The damage that he suffered from the rather obvious publicity that accompanied these charges certainly did achieve (if nothing else) great damage to Mr. Panday's political career - whether he deserved it or not!

There were, for example, a whole bunch of cases related to the construction of the new airport terminal in Piarco. Indeed, it was reported that some Americans involved in the construction of the airport were charged with bribery and corruption and either they were found guilty or they pleaded guilty (I can't remember which). But I thought that the American case was related to one or more of the corruption cases down here. And the American case was completed years ago. Why did the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP) then withdraw one or more of the local corruption cases? Was the withdrawn case(s) linked to the American case in which the persons were found guilty? If so, why didn't the DPP go up to the States and get the evidence from that case and apply it down here?

There are a million questions that one should have about criminal matters down here. For example, why are these high profile cases against "big wigs" never heard? Why do they take so much time to be heard and completed? Why can a politician (like Dr. Rowley, for example) make a very, very serious allegation (emailgate) that the then Prime Minister and some leading members of her cabinet were involved in a plot to murder somebody and absolutely nothing comes of it? The accusation is simply left hanging in the air, nobody is ever charged and the press  or some politician then regurgitates it as though it was a proven fact! On this point alone, do you realize that Dr. Rowley made the accusation, has never withdrawn it and has never been called upon to withdraw it? And then we have a terrible accusation made again under Parliamentary cover that some Members of Parliament are engaged in trafficking of women and children. But nothing is done about it! So? Is the allegation true? If so, who has the responsibility of investigating it (in other words who is the actual person doing the investigation) and when exactly can we get some closure on this horrible act?

I could go on, but hopefully you have got the point. So? let me put the question with which I began this post in another way: do you believe that there is anybody in a strictly non-political office who is exercising his/her functions in that office in a partisan manner? If so, who do you think he/she/them is/are and what should we do about it?


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