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.