Ken Ali

?The next na­tion­al poll, hard-hit­ting par­lia­men­tar­i­an Dr Kei­th Row­ley told the House last Oc­to­ber, "will be the Ude­cott elec­tion."

Mat­ters probed by the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry, Row­ley at­test­ed, were "ten times worst than what hap­pened in Pi­ar­co Air­port. It's even more brazen. I can't be­lieve they could have been so bold." He added: "To­day, every school child knows there is some­thing called Ude­cott and it smells to high heav­ens. The whole coun­try says the prob­lem ... ought to be dealt with by chang­ing the board (of di­rec­tors)." Row­ley likened the Ude­cott af­fair to the John­ny O'Hal­lo­ran cor­rup­tion stench of the 1970s and 80s, still the defin­ing bobol rack­et of in­de­pen­dent T&T. He re­called cam­paign­ing in the 1986 gen­er­al elec­tion: "You go­ing door to door and they slam­ming doors in your face... all they telling you about is O'Hal­lo­ran." The Ude­cott scan­dal was Row­ley's pas­sion­ate per­son­al cru­sade, part­ly be­cause he sac­ri­ficed his lofty min­is­te­r­i­al job over his hard­line de­mand for pro­bity, in the process be­com­ing an un­com­pro­mis­ing whistle­blow­er. But un­doubt­ed­ly the tax­pay­er-fund­ed con­struc­tion be­he­moth is this decade's ax­is of pub­lic cor­rup­tion, per­ceived as the flag­bear­er of bid-rig­ging, nepo­tism and squan­der­ma­nia.

To be sure, the in­de­pen­dent ju­ry is still out, as the coun­try awaits the thor­ough probe of Prof John Uff and his in­ves­ti­ga­tors. But by his non­cha­lant ap­proach to the ever-deep­en­ing scan­dal and his ap­par­ent cud­dling of Calder Hart, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has got­ten the Ude­cott filth smeared all over his po­lit­i­cal suit. Some politi­cians nev­er learn from his­to­ry. The Ude­cott im­broglio is a throw­back to the Pi­ar­co mess of the Bas­deo Pan­day years, a tale of wild fi­nan­cial ex­cess­es by cer­tain project ex­ec­u­tives.

There was the per­func­to­ry Jus­tice Lennox Deyals­ingh probe of 1997, which looked at "in­con­sis­ten­cies" in the award of $110 mil­lion worth of con­tracts to the NYC Con­sor­tium. But that en­quiry served lit­tle good. By the time a re­turn­ing Man­ning regime venge­ful­ly set up the Jus­tice Clin­ton Bernard probe, the Pi­ar­co Air­port stench had be­come cor­rup­tion lore and had sul­lied the im­age of the Pan­day era for all times. Man­ning's Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment was in­stalled in­to na­tion­al of­fice on the thread­bare jus­ti­fi­ca­tion of "re­li­gious and moral val­ues," in what would prob­a­bly re­main the most con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly stag­ger­ing de­ci­sion ever made at Pres­i­dent's House. It was the PNM, you see, that had been vot­ed out in 1986 in a na­tion­al up­roar against O'Hal­lo­ran-head­lined cor­rup­tion, so suc­cinct­ly de­fined by Desmond Cartey as "all ah we t'ief."

ANR Robin­son, in his in­car­na­tion as an an­ti-PNM politi­cian be­fore he mor­phed in­to Head of State, had launched with­er­ing cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions at the par­ty. In­deed, his his­toric 1986 Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion elec­tion tri­umph re­sult­ed, in part, from an as­sur­ance of be­ing the an­ti­dote to the bobol-taint­ed PNM. George Cham­bers had promised in his five years as Prime Min­is­ter to in­sti­tu­tion­alise an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion, which, had he kept his solemn promise, would have helped to de­mark his tenure from the cal­lous in­dif­fer­ence of the pre­vi­ous Er­ic Williams ad­min­is­tra­tion. O'Hal­lo­ran, af­ter all, was Williams' con­fi­dante to the end. Cham­bers went the way of all po­lit­i­cal flesh, mak­ing no sus­tain­able ef­forts to du­el with the na­tion­al sore of cor­rup­tion with the na­tion­al purse. He took no hint when Spar­row, in his epic We Like It So, dead­panned about "the north­ern and south­ern idols/the two king­pins of bobol." Robin­son's in­stal­la­tion of a PNM Gov­ern­ment on the ba­sis of clean po­lit­i­cal hands is a poignant com­ment on two es­sen­tial mat­ters. One was how dra­mat­i­cal­ly his per­spec­tive had changed in a decade and a half. The sec­ond is how wretched the Pan­day regime was then be­ing viewed. As an aside, the Robin­son ad­min­is­tra­tion did, in­deed, make a stout ef­fort at po­lit­i­cal pro­bity, sym­bol­ised by the reg­is­ter of gifts which was in­tro­duced for gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials.

To be sure, the O'Hal­lo­ran, Pi­ar­co and Hart scan­dals are mere em­blems of wan­ton fi­nan­cial im­pro­pri­ety by the rel­e­vant rul­ing regimes of the day, there be­ing abun­dant sto­ries, large and small, about un­der­hand­ed deals, con­tract fix­ing, in­flat­ed project pric­ing and oth­er ren­der­ings of ill-got­ten gains. No po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion–with the pos­si­ble ex­cep­tion of Robin­son–dis­played com­mit­ment and will to counter a scourge that is cul­tur­al­ly in­grained and which rep­re­sents a colos­sal fail­ing of post-colo­nial rule. This is a woe­ful com­ment on lead­er­ship, in par­tic­u­lar, and al­so the bar­ren­ness of rel­e­vant in­sti­tu­tions. It is, for ex­am­ple, a damn­ing in­dict­ment on Pres­i­dent Max Richards that there has not been an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion for a year even in the midst of swirling claims of malfea­sance in pub­lic of­fice. The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion is no fool­proof bul­wark against bobol, since, in this land of in­ge­nu­ity and cun­ning, cheat­ing the trea­sury re­quires mere na­tive craft and com­pli­ant ac­com­plices. But the leg­isla­tive teeth of a com­mis­sion sym­bol­is­es a so­ci­ety's com­mit­ment to re­mov­ing graft from the hall­ways of pow­er and of­fers a first line of de­fence against grease-hands. Pres­i­dent Richards has bad­ly bun­gled what ought to be a pro­ce­dur­al ad­min­is­tra­tive mat­ter.

His ap­point­ment of the short-lived com­mis­sion last year was as ham-fist­ed as was his nam­ing of Michael An­nisette as an in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, both ex­er­cis­es un­veil­ing a lack of re­search and ba­sic aware­ness of the so­ci­ety. That that could have emerged from Pres­i­dent's House and from an of­fice-hold­er who, as a pre­vi­ous prin­ci­pal of the uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus was in­te­gral­ly linked to the land, is a telling com­ment on Mr Richards. The Head of State must ap­point an In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion post-haste, toss­ing aside the ab­sur­di­ty of be­ing un­able to find a wor­thy ac­coun­tant as a mem­ber. But in a coun­try whose strug­gle against fi­nan­cial wrong­do­ing dates back to Gene Miles' self­less cru­sade of the 1960s, there is ur­gent and fo­cused need for an all-en­com­pass­ing at­tack on this crime against the peo­ple. It must ide­al­ly be­gin with de­ci­sive and un­com­pro­mis­ing lead­er­ship from the po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion. PM Man­ning's vir­tu­al em­brace of Hart and vit­ri­olic de­nounce­ment of his crit­ics does not re­as­sure a be­sieged na­tion.

Nei­ther does Min­is­ter Dr Emi­ly Gaynor Dick-Forde's lu­di­crous apol­o­gy and de­fence of a con­struc­tion czar who has been a cen­tral fig­ure in a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar pub­lic probe. Lead­ers must treat the na­tion with more re­spect. The peo­ple must de­mand it!

�2 Ken Ali co-hosts the Morn­ing Pan­chay­at each week­day

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