Dy­lan Ker­ri­g­an

Blog­ging last week, Mr Afra Ray­mond, the pres­i­dent of the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil for the Con­struc­tion In­dus­try, high­light­ed a Ju­ly 12 af­fi­davit filed by the Min­istry of Fi­nance in re­sponse to his Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion (FOIA) re­quests of 2012 and 2013.His re­quests were for in­for­ma­tion con­nect­ed to CL Fi­nan­cial. Re­quest­ed doc­u­ments in­clud­ed au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments, pre­sen­ta­tions to Par­lia­ment, and a list of cred­i­tors.

There is much to dwell on in the of­fi­cial Gov­ern­ment re­sponse. The tac­tics to thwart Mr Ray­mond's re­quests for trans­paren­cy are them­selves sug­ges­tive, as is Mr Ray­mond's ques­tion: "What is the big se­cret?"For those in­ter­est­ed in the of­fi­cial cor­re­spon­dence and more de­tails of the case, Mr Ray­mond's blog can be found here http://afraray­mond.word­press.com/

The le­gal dra­ma play­ing out be­tween the two par­ties is rem­i­nis­cent of work the an­thro­pol­o­gist Mar­i­lyn Strath­ern did in pre-1975 Papua New Guinea. There she asked a sim­i­lar ques­tion: "What does vis­i­bil­i­ty con­ceal?"By this she meant trans­paren­cy is nev­er ac­com­plished. Yes, trans­paren­cy im­plies clar­i­ty, vis­i­bil­i­ty and open­ness. But trans­paren­cy in gov­ern­ment, or­gan­i­sa­tions and amongst the pow­er­ful is more rit­u­al than out­come. Not to men­tion that what might be seen and trans­par­ent for some, can of­ten be off-lim­its and opaque for oth­ers.

http://www.guardian.co.tt/dig­i­tal/new-mem­bers