In the ab­sence of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment thrive.

When these are lack­ing in the gov­er­nance of a na­tion, whether at the lev­el of po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tion, or in the var­i­ous eco­nom­ic and so­cial spheres, there is a toll on na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment and the qual­i­ty of life of cit­i­zens.

Al­though the Sir Solomon Ho­choy High­way ex­ten­sion to Point Fortin has fi­nal­ly been com­plet­ed, bring­ing much re­lief to com­muters and mo­torists, there are still many un­re­solved is­sues sur­round­ing that project. Tax­pay­ers are still owed many ex­pla­na­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly as it per­tains to the con­tract award­ed to the Brazil­ian firm Con­stru­to­ra OAS and the cost­ly le­gal bat­tles still tak­ing place.

So, while there have al­ready been strong ob­jec­tions to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s an­nounce­ment of a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee (JSC) of Par­lia­ment to look in­to the project — most no­tably from Oropouche East MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Austin Jack Warn­er — let this be an op­por­tu­ni­ty for a thor­ough, un­bi­ased ex­am­i­na­tion of all the facts.

Let the truth be told.

The con­ven­ing of this in­ves­ti­ga­to­ry body, com­pris­ing par­lia­men­tar­i­ans from all sides, to do a de­tailed study of that high­way con­struc­tion and then make rec­om­men­da­tions, could be a crit­i­cal step in safe­guard­ing fu­ture projects.

Hope­ful­ly, this JSC will in­volve a lev­el of fact-find­ing, pos­si­bly lead­ing to fur­ther in­ves­ti­ga­tions by oth­er agen­cies, or crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings, if war­rant­ed, to bring com­plete res­o­lu­tion of all the is­sues that have haunt­ed the high­way project.

If that hap­pens, it will ac­com­plish much more than re­cent com­mis­sions of en­quiry (CoE) that have been cost­ly and time-con­sum­ing but de­liv­ered lit­tle or noth­ing.

Among the most glar­ing ex­am­ples was the CoE in­to the at­tempt­ed coup of 1990, chaired by Sir David Sim­mons and con­duct­ed be­tween Sep­tem­ber 7, 2010, and Sep­tem­ber 23, 2013, at a cost to tax­pay­ers of $31.8 mil­lion. The re­fusal of coup leader Yasin Abu Bakr to an­swer a sum­mons to tes­ti­fy be­fore the CoE meant that key ob­jec­tives of that ex­er­cise were not achieved.

The same can be said about the CoE that in­ves­ti­gat­ed the caus­es of the col­lapse of Cli­co and the Hin­du Cred­it Union (HCU). It cost more than $500 mil­lion and in­volved five mil­lion pages of doc­u­ments and 77 lawyers, but had no in­put from for­mer Cli­co boss Lawrence Duprey, who to date has nev­er ac­count­ed for his role in the fail­ure of a fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tion that caused neg­a­tive reper­cus­sions all across the Caribbean.

There are oth­er cas­es of high-pro­file pub­lic in­quiries that have failed to de­liv­er jus­tice and ac­count­abil­i­ty to cit­i­zens, in­clud­ing the $46.2 mil­lion Uff en­quiry in­to the con­struc­tion sec­tor and the $24.5 mil­lion CoE in­to the Las Al­turas res­i­den­tial tow­ers.

Months af­ter a fi­nal re­port was promised, T&T still awaits the find­ings of the CoE in­to the deaths of LM­CS divers Kaz­im Ali Jnr, Fyzal Kur­ban, Rishi Na­gas­sar and Yusuf Hen­ry in a Paria Fu­el Trad­ing Co Ltd pipeline in Feb­ru­ary 2022. Hope­ful­ly, jus­tice will soon be de­liv­ered in that mat­ter.

Too of­ten, what­ev­er the good in­ten­tions might have been at the start of these ex­er­cis­es, they are quick­ly ob­scured by agen­das and mo­tives that are not in the na­tion­al in­ter­est.

This is an ap­peal to the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion. Don’t al­low the JSC on the high­way project to be­come a fu­tile ex­er­cise dri­ven by po­lit­i­cal mo­tives. Let it be about seek­ing and find­ing truth.