FOR THE RECORD

The last time I saw Gordon Draper alive was March 2003 in Barbados’ Grantley Adams International Airport. We were both in the busy in-transit lounge, I en route to Piarco, he to London, I suppose, which is where he had more or less been living and working since the mid-nineties. I was sitting, sipping some tea when I spotted the former PNM man. He was on his feet, looking around for a vacant chair. His eyes collided with mine as they explored the room.

I gave him a half-wave — we knew each other professionally and I had always found him pleasant enough. Gordon Draper turned his head away without acknowledging my salutation. I was not angered by the snub. I realised that Draper had not forgiven me for breaking the story on his repeated absence from Parliament from 1995 to 2000, when he was supposed to be the PNM MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West. He had every right to slight me if he so desired. And anyway, journalists are supposed to be accustomed, if not immune to cold shoulders or hot heads. What the recently deceased Gordon Draper did not realise last year, as he did not in 1998 when I wrote the story, was that I had a job to do, even if he did not.

When in 1998, I reported his perpetual non-attendance, I had only just returned from a year abroad and was back on my preferred beat, covering parliament and politics. The first thing I noticed was that Draper’s seat was as empty in 1998 as it had been in 1997 and as it had been for most of the life of the Fifth Parliament of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago. On checking the parliamentary attendance records, I discovered that Draper had missed more than half of the legislature’s sittings. He was working in London and his leader Patrick Manning was permitting him to shirk his real work here. After unsuccessfully trying to get the MP for a comment — he was out of the country — I handed in the story and Newsday printed it.
A few days later, on returning home, when asked if he didn’t think that he was being derelict in his duty to his constituents, Draper’s disingenuous answer to reporters was that he was always in touch with his constituency chairman and that he had left a group of people in charge.

He was very cool about the whole thing and didn’t seem to care about the people who had elected him to represent them or that he now held the dubious honour of being the second MP in TT’s short legislative history to be an absentee representative. Dr Rudranath Capildeo, leader of the DLP, who also spent most of his time in London, was the first. (What our politicians have with London?!) I raise these issues today because I feel it necessary to set the record straight on behalf of my media colleagues, who for the most part, in their news reports on Draper’s death exercised self-censorship and erased this most important segment of Draper’s career in public life. I never expected the politicians, the business community from whence the MP came, or the priest officiating at his funeral to mention the sour note on which Draper’s political calling ended. I knew the once Minister and MP would be upheld by them as the hero of public service reform, a national treasure, a man of the people.

Their job — whether they were being completely honest or not — was to eulogise him. The media on the other hand were not in the eulogy writing business. Their sole function was to present the entire picture of Gordon Draper’s life, whether they liked him or nor, whether his death pained them or not. Personal feelings for the man or not wishing to ill speak the dead should not obscure the truth. The day after Draper died, one daily alone mentioned his absenteeism and only en passant. All the other papers, including this one, engaged in laudatory, honeyed news reporting, forgetting one of their chief roles: to function as best as possible as accurate scribes of events and lives. News is placed in library archives for its later use in research. Have the TT press recently shown themselves to be professional scriveners of Draper’s political record? No, they have not. I’m not suggesting that Gordon Draper did not make a contribution to his country and to the PNM or that many were not saddened at his passing. Neither am I asking the media to say anything about him now that they could not say when he was alive to defend himself. But the media must be honest, whether Draper is alive or dead, and the facts are that Gordon Draper turned his back on his constituents from 1995 to 2000 and instead of resigning his seat, left others to do his job.

So, let’s revisit these facts. The PNM lost the snap poll in 1995 and was catapulted unexpectedly into Opposition. Many of its ministers were shocked at the sudden change in salaries. Many were also annoyed at their leader Patrick Manning for making them lose office a year early. Instead of being able to count on all 17 PNM MPs to represent the seats the PNM had won, Manning quickly found himself down to 14. Two of his men, Dr Vincent Lasse and Dr Rupert Griffith double crossed their party and crossed the floor to the Government benches and to ministerial positions. Their act was unpardonable. The third MP to diminish the force of the Opposition was Gordon Draper. Draper didn’t cross the floor, but his absence from Parliament made him equally useless to the Opposition PNM. And at least, traitors or not, Lasse and Griffith were always in the House and in their constituencies, so whether their constituents were angered at them or not, they still had representation. Draper was MIA, most of the time. His constituents had to call London to get him. Was his conduct not similarly indefensible?

The media in TT simply have to forget who we may offend in reporting the facts. We are not in this business to make friends or win popularity contests. Neither are we the guardians of the sensibilities of anyone. We already have the sorry spectacle of sportsmen writing “news reports” about games their team is playing when it is obvious that such reports can hardly be objective. We are criticised constantly for being careless with our facts, loose in our employment of English, sensational in our coverage. Let’s not put any more dents in our professions’ reputation by becoming eulogists. The public must be able to trust that when it reads or listens to a news report today or tomorrow on the life of Gordon Draper or anyone else, it gets from us, the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth, no matter who may be hurt by that truth or who may snub us after reading or hearing it.

Columnist’s note: In the column entitled “Quest for Integrity,” a computer or a human erroneously changed the expression “poring over,” which signifies scrutinising for “pouring over,” which means to throw a substance, such as water, on something. I tried to correct the error the following week, but the printer’s devil knocked the correction off the page. I can only hope that this one gets past the imp!
suz@itrini.com