To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?An­oth­er "ex­tra­or­di­nary" state­ment com­ing from a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, this one ex­pressed by none oth­er than At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, who re­mind­ed us in his first pub­lic ut­ter­ance of im­por­tance on the Calder Hart/Ude­cott mat­ter that he is the "le­gal ad­vis­er to the Cab­i­net and the guardian of the pub­lic in­ter­est."

There is need to place in­to con­text the state­ment of the AG and the al­le­ga­tions sur­round­ing this mat­ter. The al­le­ga­tions start­ed ap­prox­i­mate­ly four years ago and the three ma­jor in­ter­ven­tions by the Gov­ern­ment have on­ly been made af­ter tremen­dous pub­lic pres­sure, even em­bar­rass­ment, al­most as if the Gov­ern­ment was in­tent on not hear­ing or see­ing any evil. The first ma­jor in­ter­ven­tion by Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning to es­tab­lish the Uff Com­mis­sion of En­quiry was tak­en on­ly af­ter UNC MP Ramesh Ma­haraj went to the Par­lia­ment in May 2008, al­most two years ago, and al­leged fam­i­ly con­nec­tions be­tween the Harts and the Malaysian firm Sun­way. The sec­ond in­ter­ven­tion of sig­nif­i­cance was ini­ti­at­ed when le­gal ac­tion by Ude­cott and Mr Hart was threat­en­ing to de­rail the Gov­ern­ment-ap­point­ed com­mis­sion of en­quiry from hav­ing its re­port made pub­lic. Ac­cord­ing to the AG, he found it "nec­es­sary then to pro­tect the pub­lic in­ter­est." He there­fore ap­point­ed foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tor Bob Lindquist to work with the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T to in­ves­ti­gate the mat­ter. Five months lat­er, it takes the re­lease of doc­u­ments by the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) for the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al to find him­self in a po­si­tion to ad­vise the Prime Min­is­ter about the in­ves­ti­ga­tion of Mr Hart and to call in the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice and the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions to pur­sue crim­i­nal in­quiries against him.

There are two puz­zling fea­tures which have char­ac­terised the func­tion­ing of Gov­ern­ment and its agen­cies in these mat­ters: an ab­sence of ini­tia­tive to "pro­tect the pub­lic in­ter­est," re­quir­ing as it has pub­lic em­bar­rass­ment to act, and the ab­sence so far of ef­fi­ca­cy, en­er­gy and re­sults from the forced in­ves­ti­ga­tions. An op­po­si­tion MP op­er­at­ing pri­vate­ly gained the ini­tial doc­u­men­ta­tion on the fam­i­ly con­nec­tion, then two oth­er pri­vate at­tor­neys from an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal par­ty could find in­for­ma­tion in short time, while the state ma­chin­ery is yet to find the com­pelling in­for­ma­tion re­quired to con­firm or de­ny the fam­i­ly re­la­tion be­tween the Sun­way di­rec­tors and the Harts. Why has Gov­ern­ment not ini­ti­at­ed gov­ern­ment-to-gov­ern­ment con­tacts to bring as­sured and ex­pe­di­tious re­sults? But al­so as­ton­ish­ing are the ac­tions and re­ac­tions of min­is­ters and the Prime Min­is­ter over the pe­ri­od. Sure­ly the point is tak­en that un­der the law a per­son re­mains in­no­cent un­til proven guilty. But there must be a bal­ance to that prin­ci­ple: should the min­is­ters and the Prime Min­is­ter have been go­ing out of their way to pro­claim the in­no­cence of Calder Hart?

In one in­stance when the for­mer hus­band of Mrs Hart sub­mit­ted his state­ment to the com­mis­sion ful­ly pre­pared to be cross-ex­am­ined on the mat­ter, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning took the po­si­tion that Mr Khan's state­ment was that of a "jilt­ed lover" and could not be trust­ed. Hav­ing dealt ex­ten­sive­ly yes­ter­day with Min­is­ter Dick-Forde and her claims that the cit­i­zens of this coun­try hound­ed Mr Hart out of of­fice, the ex­tra­or­di­nary state­ment from the AG is made, re­veal­ing two im­por­tant mat­ters: it was the AG who mount­ed crim­i­nal in­ves­ti­ga­tions against Mr Hart, and it is the Prime Min­is­ter who more than like­ly in­sti­gat­ed Mr Hart's res­ig­na­tion. More­over, and ac­cord­ing to the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, his ad­vice to the Prime Min­is­ter was based on the doc­u­ments made pub­lic by the COP, the same set of doc­u­ments up­on which the cit­i­zens have been com­ment­ing. Is Min­is­ter Dick-Forde now go­ing to slam her two col­leagues for "hound­ing Mr Hart" out of of­fice? Sure­ly those who have stood with Mr Hart, pro­claim­ing his in­no­cence at every pos­si­ble turn, must fall with him if he falls.