DR HAMID GHANY

As the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion con­tin­ues its in­ex­orable spi­ral in­to an­oth­er con­tro­ver­sy, the at­ten­dant self-right­eous­ness of the chair­man, Ken Gor­don, now leaves us with yet an­oth­er wound on this bad­ly wound­ed and limp­ing or­gan­i­sa­tion. His open de­c­la­ra­tion that he did noth­ing wrong by en­ter­tain­ing the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, at his home for a pri­vate meet­ing to dis­cuss a mat­ter that Dr Row­ley had sent to the Pres­i­dent is enough to make one laugh, oth­er­wise you might cry.

Quite apart from the rev­e­la­tion of con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion to some­one who falls in the cat­e­go­ry of "a per­son in pub­lic life," there is al­so the de­ci­sion of the chair­man to re­tain the ser­vices of se­nior coun­sel to com­mence the very in­ves­ti­ga­tion that Dr Row­ley is in­ter­est­ed in. Mr Gor­don knows the dif­fer­ence be­tween Dr Row­ley as "a per­son in pub­lic life" and your av­er­age news re­porter who is not cov­ered in the same way un­der the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act.

With news re­porters cir­cling around the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in pur­suit of le­git­i­mate sto­ries as part of the very virtue of free­dom of the press that had be­come so con­tro­ver­sial a cou­ple months ago, the place­ment of Dr Row­ley amongst them as "a per­son in pub­lic life" com­plete with notepad, pen and cell phone recorder takes us in­to the com­e­dy zone of this af­fair.

The Prime Min­is­ter's force­ful at­tack on Dr Row­ley at the Mon­day Night Fo­rum of the UNC last week seemed to place too much em­pha­sis on his role as op­posed to that of Mr Gor­don. The re­al­i­ty is that Dr Row­ley is an ac­tive politi­cian who will al­ways seek ad­van­tage for him­self and his par­ty. Mr Gor­don should know bet­ter, and the fact that his aide mem­oire has been con­tra­dict­ed by Dr Row­ley's ver­sion of events is what is mak­ing this a ma­jor con­tro­ver­sy.

The two of them have con­flict­ing ver­sions of what tran­spired. Mr Gor­don said that he re­vealed to Dr Row­ley that there was noth­ing be­fore the com­mis­sion in re­spect of the print­ed e-mails.

Dr Row­ley told I95.5 FM two Fri­days ago that he was prepar­ing to go to the Par­lia­ment short­ly with this mat­ter and be­cause of that he need­ed to en­sure that the way that he would con­duct him­self in Par­lia­ment would meet the stan­dard of what would be ex­pect­ed of him as a par­lia­men­tar­i­an. That is not what Mr Gor­don has said up to the time of my writ­ing this col­umn.

In nat­u­ral­ly pro­tect­ing their po­lit­i­cal leader, the PNM has had to make two con­ces­sions. One is to let Mr Gor­don go by align­ing their leader with the av­er­age me­dia re­porter who would be seek­ing in­for­ma­tion for fur­ther pub­li­ca­tion there­by trans­fer­ring the bur­den of judg­ment to Mr Gor­don to de­ci­pher the dif­fer­ence be­tween the two (one who is "a per­son in pub­lic life" and the oth­er who is not).

In oth­er words, Dr Row­ley is en­ti­tled, just like any me­dia re­porter, to seek con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion from the com­mis­sion and then to pub­lish it in the man­ner in which re­porters do. That is a bad anal­o­gy.

The last time a re­porter did that the of­fices of his em­ploy­ers were searched by the po­lice and he was fol­lowed by po­lice to his home. This now equates me­dia re­porters with "per­sons in pub­lic life" where con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion in­volv­ing the com­mis­sion is con­cerned and sug­gests that "per­sons in pub­lic life" can re­veal con­fi­den­tial in­for­ma­tion from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion in the pub­lic do­main.

The oth­er con­ces­sion is the val­i­da­tion, by the PNM, of the Prime Min­is­ter's de­ci­sion to have var­i­ous types of meet­ings at her home. Are meet­ings of politi­cians at the Prime Min­is­ter's home the new bench­mark for the chair­man of a qua­si-ju­di­cial body to have meet­ings at his home to dis­cuss com­mis­sion busi­ness with in­ter­est­ed par­ties?

With the dan­ger zone of judges hav­ing meet­ings at their homes with in­ter­est­ed par­ties in cas­es be­fore them just over the hori­zon, we might as well just de­clare the whole thing prop­er and amend the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act ac­cord­ing­ly to es­tab­lish a free-for-all among com­mis­sion­ers of the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to have home meet­ings with in­ter­est­ed par­ties.

With the deaf­en­ing si­lence of the usu­al pres­sure groups and oth­er com­men­ta­tors who can al­ways be count­ed on to be out front on eth­i­cal chal­lenges, like this one, fac­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials, we have now moved in­to a dead zone where the so­ci­ety must now con­front the true re­al­i­ty of what is hap­pen­ing here.

The pow­er of so­cial con­nec­tions that cut across small so­ci­eties like ours make it dif­fi­cult for these so­ci­eties to im­ple­ment such in­sti­tu­tions that pro­mote trans­paren­cy, ac­count­abil­i­ty and scruti­ny. With po­lit­i­cal par­ties si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly at­tack­ing and de­fend­ing the chair­man, there is no doubt that the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is now be­ing ripped apart in the process. Its brand name is bad­ly dam­aged.

While, at the time of writ­ing, the usu­al com­men­ta­tors and pres­sure groups who nor­mal­ly have a lot to say now sit idly on the side­lines neutered and un­able to stand up one way or the oth­er. What ef­fec­tive­ness will they have when the next con­tro­ver­sy in­volv­ing the com­mis­sion oc­curs?