To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie should be com­mend­ed for the hon­esty of his ad­mis­sion that the me­dia re­ports last week of an un­de­clared Cay­man Is­lands bank ac­count al­leged­ly held by a for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter and his wife turned out to be a de­lib­er­ate de­cep­tion. But the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al must now go fur­ther and at­tempt to get to the bot­tom of what he de­scribed as a "to­tal fab­ri­ca­tion and a hoax cal­cu­lat­ed to cre­ate con­fu­sion in the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty." The process of de­ter­min­ing ex­act­ly who at­tempt­ed to per­pe­trate this fab­ri­ca­tion and hoax on the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is cru­cial be­cause Mr Je­re­mie was ab­solute­ly cor­rect when he told Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day that "much en­er­gy is be­ing ex­pend­ed to dis­sem­i­nate mis­in­for­ma­tion with a clear pur­pose of dis­turb­ing the peace and sta­bil­i­ty" of the coun­try.

The At­tor­ney Gen­er­al is clear­ly re­fer­ring to a small group of peo­ple who, for what­ev­er ne­far­i­ous pur­pose, are bent on cre­at­ing in­sta­bil­i­ty and con­fu­sion aimed at sab­o­tag­ing the coun­try's fu­ture. Whose in­ter­est is be­ing served by this craven and fla­grant at­tempt to dis­turb the coun­try's peace and sta­bil­i­ty? It would be ap­pro­pri­ate to de­code that ques­tion by point­ing to those who have an in­ter­est in smear­ing the good name and rep­u­ta­tion of the for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, who it was wrong­ly claimed had over US$6 mil­lion in an un­de­clared ac­count in an off­shore re­gion­al ju­ris­dic­tion. It is fair­ly well known that the for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter, who was nev­er named by this news­pa­per, has been a thorn in the side of the Gov­ern­ment on is­sues of pub­lic pro­cure­ment in the con­struc­tion sec­tor and through­out the econ­o­my.

Such out­spo­ken op­po­si­tion to the lead­ing role giv­en to a par­tic­u­lar state-owned spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny would have earned the for­mer min­is­ter many en­e­mies with­in the Gov­ern­ment. That there are those who would take their feud with the for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter as far as con­coct­ing fic­ti­tious doc­u­ments aimed at shred­ding his cred­i­bil­i­ty is an in­di­ca­tion of just how dead­ly the war be­tween good and evil has be­come. As the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in­di­cat­ed, those des­per­ate peo­ple must be root­ed out, ex­posed and pun­ished to the fullest ex­tent of the law for plot­ting what may amount, if Mr Je­re­mie's state­ment to Par­lia­ment has any cred­i­bil­i­ty, to be­ing an act of high trea­son.

We call on Mr Je­re­mie to lead the con­duct of this new in­ves­ti­ga­tion with­out fear or favour. In fact, to quote High Court Judge Ra­jen­dra Nar­ine in his judg­ment on the mat­ter of the Abu Bakr af­fi­davit last Sep­tem­ber: "In re­cent times, there have been in­ves­ti­ga­tions and pros­e­cu­tions of per­sons in high of­fice. The guid­ing prin­ci­ple has been that no one is above the law, re­gard­less of his po­si­tion." On the is­sue of the Abu Bakr af­fi­davit, the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al main­tained his po­si­tion that Jus­tice Nar­ine "er­ro­neous­ly, im­prop­er­ly, and in di­rect con­tra­ven­tion to the or­der of the Court of Ap­peal, re­ferred the af­fi­davit of an ad­mit­ted in­sur­rec­tion­ist to the DPP for in­ves­ti­ga­tion." Mr Je­re­mie needs to be re­mind­ed that the rea­son there is an in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­le­ga­tion of a deal be­tween an ad­mit­ted in­sur­rec­tion­ist and the Prime Min­is­ter is be­cause of the Privy Coun­cil judg­ment on this is­sue.

In that judg­ment, Lord Car­swell stat­ed that the essence of the al­leged agree­ment be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and Abu Bakr "was that cer­tain ad­van­tages would be giv­en to the Ja­maat out of state prop­er­ty, in re­turn for se­cur­ing vot­ing sup­port for the Prime Min­is­ter's po­lit­i­cal par­ty. In the opin­ion of the board, this was cor­rupt with­in the mean­ing and in­tend­ment of Sec­tion 3 and each par­ty to the agree­ment was act­ing in con­tra­ven­tion of the sec­tion." Fi­nal­ly, the An­ti-Cor­rup­tion In­ves­ti­ga­tion Bu­reau must be com­mend­ed for hav­ing "ful­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ed" these re­ports and de­ter­min­ing that they had ab­solute­ly no cred­i­bil­i­ty in less than a week. Such ef­fi­cien­cy is sur­pris­ing in a unit that start­ed the in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the ve­rac­i­ty of the al­le­ga­tions against for­mer Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart more than six months ago.