Too little, too late

The unpleasant fact which Mr Jeremie cannot sidestep is that his office, and therefore the PNM administration, tried their very best to avoid giving the Maha Sabha its licence.

The Maha Sabha had submitted an application like everyone else and, although some queries were raised about the slow process, the Maha Sabha only took legal action in 2002 when Citadel Limited was given a licence within two weeks of applying for it.

Citadel Limited, which operates the I95.5 talk — and gospel — format station, is owned by PNM activist Louis Lee Sing. Mr Lee Sing had been operating another under frequency, but fell out with his business partner who had the rights to it. It was in that context that the Government excused its fast-tracking of Mr Lee Sing’s application — an explanation which, however, did not explain why the Maha Sabha’s application was stuck in limbo.

So the Maha Sabha turned to the courts. And it was here that insult was added to injury. The High Court ruled in favour of the Maha Sabha but, instead of accepting this judgement, the AG decided to appeal. And, when the Appeal Court upheld the decision, the AG still did not back down, but went all the way to the Privy Council — a decision which would now cost taxpayers several million dollars, since the Law Lords, quite rightly, ordered that the State pay the appellant’s costs.

But the question remains as to why the AG and the Government took this issue so far. If the AG has a reasonable explanation, the public must hear it.

If such an explanation is not forthcoming, citizens will assume that only bias could have informed the AG’s strategy — and since the appellant in this case is the largest Hindu organisation in Trinidad and Tobago, the bias inferred is an especially unpleasant kind.

This, after all, is not like the Trinity Cross issue, which was also spearheaded by the Maha Sabha, where Prime Minister Patrick Manning probably needed the excuse of a legal judgement to take political action in removing the TC as the nation’s highest award.

Mr Manning got political currency from that move, but has now lost some of it because of the Privy Council ruling on the radio licence. After all, this matter could hardly have hung fire for four years without Mr Manning’s say-so or, at the very least, his indifference.

In our editorial one year ago, we warned the Government that “it seems likely that the Privy Council will uphold the Appeal Court ruling — in which case the Maha Sabha will get its licence and the Manning regime will, not for the first time, end up looking as though personal bias affects its judgement even in relatively minor matters.”

Now that the first part has happened, we hope that the Government will learn the lesson of the second part and, in its future policy decisions, ensure that fairness and rigorous application of the rules inform all its actions.