In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man Dr Ra­jen­dra Ram­lo­gan has warned that cit­i­zens’ in­dif­fer­ence and pas­sive ac­cep­tance of cor­rup­tion is rob­bing chil­dren of their birthright.

In a mes­sage pub­lished in the com­mis­sion’s In­tegri­ty in Per­spec­tive newslet­ter, Ram­lo­gan said ac­cept­ing cor­rup­tion as an in­evitable and im­placa­ble so­cial norm con­demns so­ci­ety.  

“So where do we turn? The need to act is im­per­a­tive. It can no longer be an is­sue about our lead­ers. In the hal­lowed halls of Par­lia­ment, there is of­ten men­tion of white-col­lar crimes. News­pa­per re­porters al­so spread the gospel.

“Yet, the over­ar­ch­ing ques­tion we must al­ways con­front is whether we, the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, are pre­pared to de­mand a so­ci­ety where there is in­tegri­ty in pub­lic life,” he said.

Ram­lo­gan ad­mit­ted that he had as­sumed the chair­man­ship of the com­mis­sion in Jan­u­ary 2021 with trep­i­da­tion, as his re­search had in­di­cat­ed the pub­lic had a neg­a­tive per­cep­tion of an in­sti­tu­tion es­tab­lished to en­sure in­tegri­ty in pub­lic life.

He said his ear­ly ex­am­i­na­tion of its work­ings showed strong ev­i­dence to sug­gest that pub­lic cyn­i­cism was jus­ti­fied and he be­lieves do­ing noth­ing is not an op­tion. 

“Laws are not meant to be re­pro­duced on pa­per with on­ly cos­met­ic at­tempts at en­force­ment,” Ram­lo­gan said.

“Tax­pay­er-fund­ed in­sti­tu­tions like the Com­mis­sion must ac­count for their stew­ard­ship in the ex­e­cu­tion of their statu­to­ry man­date. The 17th Com­mis­sion was not pre­pared to go through the mo­tion of work with lit­tle re­gard for the ad­verse im­pact on our present and fu­ture.”

Ram­lo­gan said it was not co­in­ci­den­tal that the main suc­cess­es in an­ti-cor­rup­tion oc­curred away from T&T. He re­called three ma­jor cor­rup­tion le­gal pro­ceed­ings in the 1980s.

Tesoro set­tled a law­suit with T&T filed in the Unit­ed States, pay­ing $2.8 mil­lion for wire and mail fraud, rack­e­teer­ing, bribery, as well as vi­o­la­tions of pros­ti­tu­tion laws. Sam P Wal­lace Com­pa­ny Inc en­tered in­to a con­sent agree­ment in the US in 1983 when it plead­ed guilty to cor­rupt pay­ments in T&T and paid a fine of US$530,000 re­gard­ing a failed at­tempt at build­ing a cen­tralised rac­ing fa­cil­i­ty. For­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter John O’Hal­lo­ran, ac­cused of cor­rup­tion in ac­quir­ing a DC-9 air­craft from Mc­Don­nell Dou­glas, al­so fled to Cana­da. He had agreed to pay the gov­ern­ment CAN$4 mil­lion in a law­suit filed in On­tario.

Ram­lo­gan al­so not­ed a Mi­a­mi court award to the gov­ern­ment of al­most $1 bil­lion in the Pi­ar­co Air­port civ­il as­set for­fei­ture case.

“The ob­vi­ous ques­tion from these ex­am­ples is why, af­ter 61 years of in­de­pen­dence, we are still de­pen­dent on for­eign courts for jus­tice in cor­rup­tion mat­ters,” he said.

“The Com­mis­sion recog­nis­es the need to strength­en the leg­isla­tive regime to com­bat the per­va­sive pres­ence of cor­rup­tion in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Rec­om­men­da­tions have been made for such leg­isla­tive changes. The post-colo­nial lega­cy of cor­rup­tion un­leash­es a pan­dem­ic on our na­tion that, in the fu­ture, would ren­der the rav­ages of COVID-19 a pale com­par­i­son.”

The In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion chair­man said T&T should be­come a so­ci­ety where the words “All ah we ’tief” will nev­er again be ut­tered, and the slo­gan “Do the right thing al­ways” is not mere­ly emp­ty jin­go­ism. 

He said, “In the words of Delia Fer­reira, Trans­paren­cy In­sti­tute, ‘Peo­ple’s in­dif­fer­ence is the best breed­ing ground for cor­rup­tion to grow’. Let this not be sweet T&T.”