THE PIARCO REPORT— ANOTHER CEPEP PROJECT

When a Prime Minister and his Attorney General are seeking to bamboozle the public, they should really try to tell the same version of a story and that version should be always be concocted using some small amount of logic. But, this was not the case in TT. A pattern was emerging: Patrick Manning said one thing, Glenda Morean another, and the rest of us were left with the uncomfortable feeling that we were being told only half of the story or many different tales, altogether. The most recent example, Manning’s and Morean’s comments on the Piarco Inquiry Report. One would think that the public deserved the utmost transparency on this matter, particularly given that $5 million of its tax dollars had been spent on the 170-day probe into the airport project.

On Wednesday, however, we learnt that would not be the case. The Attorney General announced glibly that the report would not be laid in Parliament that Friday, but “soon”. She, Mrs Glenda Morean, was examining it to determine whether it contained libel or whether its release could prejudice any future court action taken. (One only hoped it did not take her, as long to read the report as it had to review the declaration forms for the Integrity in Public Life Act.) Though she probably believed that her explanation for delaying the release of the report sounded legally sound, the AG forgot that some of us were not so easily hoodwinked. For one, nothing could have been more slanderous and could have affected future prosecutions than the 170-day live television coverage and the press reports of the Inquiry itself.

Indeed, on several occasions the Law Association wrote to Chairman Bernard claiming he was biased and unfair based on his comments at the sittings. The letters were copied to the Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), Geoffrey Henderson, who himself wrote the Commission advising it to be careful about pre-trial publicity prejudicing the case against those facing charges arising from the Piarco project. Furthermore, the AG knew very well that her argument for not laying the report lacked substance because once tabled in the legislature, the report’s contents were covered by privilege and thus, though potentially libellous statements could not be the subject of a lawsuit. The AG’s feeble justifications were echoed the next day at a post Cabinet press conference by her Prime Minister Patrick Manning who also cited pre-trial publicity, the libelling of the innocent for not yet releasing the report. His Government before its release, he announced might have to sanitise the Commission’s conclusions.

However, to Morean’s excuses, the Prime Minister thought he would add some topping, just in case some of the less feeble-minded public remained unconvinced by his and his sidekick’s arguments. He was not going to repeat the action’s of the NAR administration, he said, which after laying the Scott drug report in the eighties, took police officers off duty and later had too reinstate them. Thus, according to Mr Manning, tabling a document and acting on its findings were the same thing. By the next day, his AG was back on stage, this time to contradict her earlier statement. There was nothing in the report that the public had not heard, she confessed Friday. But it still had to be sanitised, she argued, even though we were left to wonder how the report could be more damaging to reputations than the Inquiry or cause more prejudice if nothing in it was really different? Why not lay it then? Was it that the report contained language which supported Newsday’s story on August 29 that there had been a rift among the Inquiry’s four Commissioners, that these were unable to agree on certain matters?

The divide apparently almost ended in half the panel not wanting to sign off on some of the harsher findings and unanimity was reportedly reached only at the last minute. Was Government, thus, seeking to juice up the Piarco report as Blair and Bush had done with intelligence on Iraq? By “sanitise”, did it mean to let the public see only its most damning parts? Was that why certain incriminating excerpts of the document had been leaked to the media, reportedly by people in the very AG’s office? Alternatively, was it that the PNM, having gained political mileage from the Inquiry no longer needed the Report? We were only left to guess the motives of the PM and his AG. Whatever their reasons, it was unfair and insulting to keep from the public the results of such a controversial Inquiry or to give voters and the Parliament a sanitised version of the report, as if this were another CEPEP project. Not when it cost that public more than $5 million of its tax dollars. Yet again, as it had done with the Integrity Act and the plans to relocate the Red House, the Government was denying the legislature, the Opposition, and the people, their right to know about and opine on critical public issues. For the PNM, good government was ignoring the legislature, defying its legislation and sanitising reports.

Suzanne Mills is the editor
of the daily Newsday.