JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Thursday, February 20, 2025

Credibility, confidence and consensus  

by

Guardian Media
747 days ago
20230205

The law, cus­toms and prac­tice are the foun­da­tions of civ­il so­ci­ety al­low­ing cit­i­zens to pro­ceed with every­day life. Cit­i­zens have a le­git­i­mate ex­pec­ta­tion that the ma­jor­i­ty will com­ply with these ba­sic laws and cus­toms. Dif­fer­ences of opin­ion and con­flict will oc­cur pe­ri­od­i­cal­ly and can be set­tled am­i­ca­bly with­out re­course to a third par­ty. A wide­spread per­cep­tion that the rules do not ap­ply to all could lead to a loss of con­fi­dence in the sys­tem there­by re­sult­ing in civ­il dis­or­der. Over the last month, a few mat­ters have arisen caus­ing con­cern. Pre­ma­ture an­nounce­ments and how pub­lic of­fi­cials re­spond can un­der­mine their cred­i­bil­i­ty and by ex­ten­sion con­fi­dence.

The first is the pub­li­ca­tion by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion of the names of peo­ple in pub­lic life who failed to file a De­c­la­ra­tion of In­come As­sets and Li­a­bil­i­ties, and a State­ment of Reg­is­tra­ble in­ter­ests in ac­cor­dance with S11(6) of the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act. Peo­ple in pub­lic life are part of the gov­er­nance mech­a­nisms which al­low so­ci­ety to func­tion and are ex­pect­ed to be trust­wor­thy. De­clar­ing their as­sets is part of that process. The list in­clud­ed 595 names, 86 of which re­lat­ed to the 2014-2020 pe­ri­od and 509 in 2021. In 2021, 1,190 peo­ple were deemed to be in pub­lic life, mean­ing that 43 per cent did not com­ply with the act.

 If 43 per cent of mo­torists failed to stop at a traf­fic light, the re­sult would be chaos and may­hem. The list in­clud­ed par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, per­ma­nent sec­re­taries, doc­tors, lawyers, aca­d­e­mics, en­gi­neers, ac­coun­tants, bankers, for­mer cen­tral bankers, and pro­fes­sion­al man­agers. Thir­ty-three (46.5 per cent) of the 71 par­lia­men­tar­i­ans did not file their re­turns, in­clud­ing (12) cab­i­net min­is­ters (48 per cent). Amongst these were the chair­men and deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers of both par­ties and one in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor. 

The sec­ond is the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s dis­ap­pear­ing file. The Gov­ern­ment’s fil­ing sys­tems pur­pose­ful­ly in­clude some mea­sure of du­pli­ca­tion. Giv­en the high-pro­file na­ture of the Vin­dra Naipaul-Cool­man case, there would have been more than one file, one in the AG’s of­fice and at least one more in So­lic­i­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice. As a se­nior coun­sel not­ed, the state at­tor­neys would have been aware of the judge­ment ap­pli­ca­tion and as­sess­ment no­tice and par­tic­i­pat­ed in the as­sess­ment of the dam­ages.

Hav­ing been no­ti­fied of the ap­pli­ca­tion for de­fault judg­ment, why did the state at­tor­neys not ap­ply to set aside the judg­ment or do so at the no­tice of as­sess­ment? Or is this sim­ply an at­tempt to di­vert at­ten­tion from the pub­lic re­la­tions fall­out re­sult­ing from the $20 mil­lion award and the state’s ob­vi­ous fail­ure to dis­charge its civic du­ties? Un­for­tu­nate­ly, this is one of many em­bar­rass­ments in­volv­ing le­gal mat­ters pur­sued or de­fend­ed by the State. These in­clude the he­li­copter mat­ter in­volv­ing Ver­ti­cal Avi­a­tion Ltd in the US for breach of con­tract, and Cob­ham He­li­copters Ser­vices Trinidad Ltd, where de­fault judge­ments were al­so giv­en.

Third is the an­nounce­ment of the US sanc­tions waiv­er grant­ed to GORTT in re­spect of the Drag­on gas field in Venezuela's ter­ri­to­r­i­al wa­ters. Pru­dence and diplo­ma­cy 101 should have called for a cau­tious ap­proach in­clud­ing a qui­et con­ver­sa­tion with Venezue­lan au­thor­i­ties pri­or to an­nounc­ing the waiv­er. Pres­i­dent Maduro’s force­ful re­pu­di­a­tion of US waivers as colo­nial­ism and an af­front to its sov­er­eign­ty could sour fu­ture ne­go­ti­a­tions be­tween our coun­tries.

Ac­tions, not words, build cred­i­bil­i­ty which is nec­es­sary to fos­ter trust, con­fi­dence and con­sen­sus that the ship of state is safe. 

Editorial


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored