Our coun­try con­tin­ues to fail in terms of ac­count­abil­i­ty, and cit­i­zens are con­tin­u­ous­ly dis­cour­aged from ex­press­ing their views on any mat­ter. Those who com­ment are of­ten ac­cused of be­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly mo­ti­vat­ed.

In any de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety, me­dia free­dom and pub­lic dis­course are es­sen­tial pil­lars of ac­count­abil­i­ty. The re­cent state­ment by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, in which he dis­missed crit­i­cisms from Mr An­tho­ny Paul as “talk­ing fool­ish­ness” and im­plied that a $2.5 mil­lion pay­ment could have in­flu­enced Paul’s stance, rais­es se­ri­ous con­cerns about the Gov­ern­ment’s re­la­tion­ship with the me­dia and crit­ics.

Mr Paul has over 40 years of ex­pe­ri­ence as an en­er­gy, pol­i­cy, and strat­e­gy ad­vi­sor and has worked with the gov­ern­ment un­der every po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

Dis­miss­ing crit­i­cism out­right, rather than en­gag­ing with the sub­stance of con­cerns, sets a trou­bling prece­dent. Pub­lic fig­ures must ex­pect scruti­ny and wel­come de­bate as a sign of a healthy democ­ra­cy.

When po­lit­i­cal lead­ers re­sort to at­tack­ing crit­ics per­son­al­ly, in­stead of ad­dress­ing their claims, it can cre­ate a cul­ture of fear and dis­cour­age in­di­vid­u­als from speak­ing out against gov­ern­ment ac­tions, while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly in­creas­ing dis­trust of the gov­ern­ment. With­out reg­u­lar, qual­i­ty in­ves­tiga­tive jour­nal­ism, the role of the me­dia as a watch­dog for the peo­ple is sig­nif­i­cant­ly un­der­mined. This, in turn, weak­ens trans­paren­cy, which is im­por­tant be­cause the gov­ern­ment must at all times re­mem­ber that they are em­ployed by the cit­i­zen­ry, and must an­swer to them for all ac­tions tak­en on be­half of the coun­try, just as in any em­ploy­er-em­ploy­ee re­la­tion­ship.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s re­mark al­so sug­gests that fi­nan­cial in­cen­tives may in­flu­ence pub­lic opin­ion.

Here is a quote: “Let me tell you some­thing, if we had paid Mr Paul the $2.5 mil­lion he had re­quest­ed for a lit­tle job that we had asked him to do way up in the ear­ly part of the last ad­min­is­tra­tion which I led, he might not have been on tele­vi­sion now talk­ing fool­ish­ness and try­ing to cast as­per­sions on the peo­ple who are do­ing de­cent, ef­fec­tive work on be­half of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go. And I take a se­ri­ous um­brage at peo­ple like that, with their per­son­al grouse, go­ing on tele­vi­sion and mis­rep­re­sent­ing the facts of the gov­er­nance of this coun­try be­cause you wouldn’t know when he’s talk­ing there, that he was in fact very ear­ly in our tenure in the last gov­ern­ment, one of the ge­ol­o­gists who could have done some­thing for this coun­try but his price was too high…”

This rais­es eth­i­cal con­cerns about the re­la­tion­ship be­tween fi­nan­cial deal­ings and po­lit­i­cal dis­course. Should con­trac­tors or pro­fes­sion­als fear that their work—or lack of gov­ern­ment fund­ing—could dic­tate whether they have a right to crit­i­cise pub­lic of­fi­cials?

Fur­ther, the ref­er­ence to a “lit­tle job” cost­ing $2.5 mil­lion rais­es ques­tions about trans­paren­cy in gov­ern­ment con­tracts. How was this amount de­ter­mined? Why was the pay­ment not made? Was the de­ci­sion based on mer­it, fi­nan­cial con­straints, or po­lit­i­cal con­sid­er­a­tions? The pub­lic de­serves clear an­swers to en­sure that pro­cure­ment process­es are fair and that pub­lic funds are man­aged re­spon­si­bly.

Po­lit­i­cal­ly, the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment may have mixed ef­fects. His sup­port­ers may view it as a strong de­fence against base­less crit­i­cism, while his de­trac­tors may see it as an in­ap­pro­pri­ate re­sponse that ex­pos­es deep­er gov­er­nance is­sues. Re­gard­less of per­spec­tive, such state­ments con­tribute to a grow­ing per­cep­tion that po­lit­i­cal dis­course in Trinidad and To­ba­go is be­com­ing more com­bat­ive rather than con­struc­tive.

A gov­ern­ment com­mit­ted to trans­paren­cy should ad­dress crit­i­cisms with facts, not in­sults. If lead­ers want to fos­ter a cul­ture of re­spect and ac­count­abil­i­ty, they must rise above per­son­al at­tacks and in­stead wel­come scruti­ny as an es­sen­tial part of gov­er­nance. The Prime Min­is­ter’s words have sparked a con­ver­sa­tion, and how he choos­es to re­spond go­ing for­ward will de­ter­mine whether this mo­ment is one of di­vi­sion or an op­por­tu­ni­ty for greater open­ness.