In my 63 years of life in this coun­try, I have writ­ten over 300 let­ters to the ed­i­tors of the re­spec­tive news­pa­pers that ex­ist­ed over the years and con­tin­ue to ex­ist to this day. Among such let­ters,are a few that high­light­ed the de­ci­sions of hold­ers of high of­fice that res­onate with me and my be­liefs in moral­i­ty in pub­lic life.

To­day, I want to add to my list of he­roes of the past, a short, but dis­tin­guished list, Mr Gabriel Faria , CEO of Cham­ber of In­dus­try and com­merce.

But, for the sake of pos­ter­i­ty, may I re­call some of the achieve­ments of hon­or­able men and women who have won the ad­min­is­tra­tion of many a cit­i­zen in this coun­try.

1. Jus­tice James Davis, for his de­ci­sion in the Ap­peal of the mat­ter of Jus­tice Richard Crane Vs Chief Jus­tice Clin­ton Bernard. Jus­tice of the Ap­peal,Davis, de­liv­ered a dis­sent­ing judge­ment, against the Chief Jus­tice, his boss, telling him he was wrong in his treat­ment of Jus­tice Crane. The de­ci­sion of the Ap­peal Court,in sup­port of Jus­tice Bernard, was over­turned by the Privy Coun­cil, our fi­nal Ap­pel­late Court. Jus­tice Davis was there­fore vin­di­cat­ed in his de­ci­sion in the Court of Ap­peal, which went against the de­ci­sion of then Chief Jus­tice Bernard.

2. The de­ci­sion of sit­ting Gov­ern­ment min­is­ter,Ralph Maraj, to re­sign from The Gov­ern­ment ,as a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter, fol­low­ing, then Prime Min­is­ter, Patrick Man­ning’s de­ci­sion to de­clare a lim­it­ed State of Emer­gency, in or­der to deal with the Speak­er of the House, Oc­c­ah Seep­aul. Ralph Maraj is the broth­er is Seep­aul.

3. Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj. His re­solve for seek­ing out cor­rup­tion as a sit­ting At­tor­ney Gen­er­al, in par­tic­u­lar ref­er­ence to the Pi­ar­co Air­port con­tract led to his even­tu­al dis­missal as AG and mem­ber of the Pan­day’s cab­i­net. Mr Ma­haraj was vin­di­cat­ed in his po­si­tion by the events which fol­lowed, in­clud­ing the in­car­cer­a­tion of sev­er­al key play­ers and some be­com­ing fugi­tives from jus­tice.

4 Hulsie Bhag­gan. For her prin­ci­pled stand in a vote in Par­lia­ment, in which she vot­ed on her con­science, against the par­ty whip. This led her be­com­ing a hero in the eyes of many civic mind­ed cit­i­zens of this coun­try, and a pari­ah of the ULF. Ms Bha­gan would nev­er see the hal­lowed halls of the Par­lia­ment again.

5. Deb­o­rah Moore Mig­gins. As a Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor, (1995-2000) in the Pan­day’s gov­ern­ment, she al­so , like Hulsie Bhag­gan,re­fused to vote along with the Gov­ern­ment on a par­tic­u­lar bill. She told Pan­day to keep your Sen­a­tor­ship, I will keep my prin­ci­ples.

In my view Mr Faria, joins the short list of in­di­vid­u­als who has put coun­try be­fore self. For this he has felt the full wrath of the most pow­er­ful in­di­vid­ual in the coun­try. He did not de­ny that he made the com­ments that of­fend­ed the Prime Min­is­ter. The PM should un­der­stand Mr. Faria has a con­sti­tu­tuon­al right to free­dom of ex­pres­sion. Mr Faria owned up and he apol­o­gized, al­beit, un­nec­es­sar­i­ly. He is pre­pared to sac­ri­fice his job.

For this act of hu­mil­i­ty he must be rec­og­nized as a pa­tri­ot. Some­one who sees coun­try be­fore self. For this he must be com­mend­ed.

Robert Ram­samooj

Ch­agua­nas

via email