Dhansook between rock and hard place

In speaking about the Dansam Dhansook affair in Parliament on Friday, Attorney General John Jeremie sidestepped the substantive issue raised by Siparia MP Kamla Persad Bissessar. Ms Persad Bissessar had moved a motion of adjournment to the Lower House to question why the Attorney General had not referred the bribery allegations to the Fraud Squad. Jeremie’s response was that he referred the matter to the Integrity Commission because he knew that the Commission  would select an investigator from the police force “whose reputation for thorough and impartial work could not be questioned.” In this case, that man is Special Branch head Wellington Virgil.

Jeremie concluded that no one could take the Member for Siparia seriously “when she points to an absence of police involvement”. But Mr Jeremie was being more than a little disingenuous when he characterised Ms Persad Bissessar’s motion in this way. What the Siparia MP specifically wanted answered was why the matter had not been referred to the Director of Public Prosecutions and the Fraud Squad. Besides, the Opposition has been making these allegations for some time now. Why did it take a motion in the House for the AG to issue a response? And, even when it was given, Mr Jeremie’s response lacked the measured and reasoned tone that is expected of the Attorney General who, as Ms Persad Bissessar pointed out, is not the Government’s guardian, but the guardian of the public trust.

Jeremie might have argued, for example, that referring the matter to both the Integrity Commission and the Fraud Squad would have led to duplicated investigations. But he did not do this. Instead, he argued that all three parties involved in the matter — Ortoire/Mayaro MP Franklin Khan, Port-of-Spain East MP Eric Williams, and PNM councillor Dhansook — “were persons in public life.” By Mr Jeremie’s reasoning, this means that the Integrity Commission has precedence over the DPP and the Fraud Squad once the persons involved are public officials. The question also arises as to whether the Attorney General is the proper person to refer any matter to the Integrity Commission, when the Commission is supposed to be independent of the executive. Politics is perception, and the Opposition has launched a deliberate campaign to paint the Integrity Commissioners as puppets of the ruling PNM.

Now it may well be that, had the AG sent the Dhansook documents to the Fraud Squad, the Opposition would have protested just as vehemently that the police are in the PNM’s pockets. Indeed, they have already made this comment about the DPP and strongly hinted at political bias on the part of police officers. But what matters here is public perception. The Integrity Commission conducts its affairs in secret and slowly. The Fraud Squad (as distinct from a single investigator who has many other duties) has relatively more public trust.

Moreover, there is a clear case for Mr Dhansook to answer. In his initial statement, he admitted to bribing public officials. If this is proven false, then he is guilty of gross libel — and has already admitted to libel in an affidavit (which he later said he had written under duress). Later still he wrote a letter to the Integrity Commission stating that what he had written in the statutory declaration was true, an indication that he had lied in his first allegations. So the question is, why has the DPP not become involved yet? All in all, the Government has not handled this matter as well as it should have. We only hope that ACP Virgil will conclude his investigation quickly, because the longer he takes, the more this matter festers.