Lessons from the Scott report

THE EDITOR: Now that the report of the Piarco Commission of Inquiry has been delivered to the President and is in the hands of Government, I hope and pray that the Government will act responsibly. I heard the AG say that the Report would be laid in Parliament. Fortunately, the Prime Minister has now said that until the Report has been properly read and digested, its contents will not be made public because people’s reputations must be protected. It is good to see that the Government has finally learnt the hard and expensive lessons of the Scott Commission of Inquiry and the two Deyalsingh Inquiries, all of which ended up costing taxpayers millions of dollars when Government was unable to defend the reports in Court.

If in light of the cases handed down by the courts of Trinidad and Tobago, the Government publishes the Report and there is litigation challenging the Report on the ground that people’s reputations have been tarnished and the Government loses in court, then members of the Commission of Inquiry who wrote the report and the members of the Cabinet who took the decision to lay the report in parliament or publish its contents should be made to pay the costs personally. Taxpayers’ money must not be thrown away by politicians anxious to serve their own political ends.

NEAL BURGESS
Diego Martin