Some roads lead to Rome

REGINALD DUMAS

ADDRESSING the THA last January, Chief Secretary Farley Augustine listed what I called in a Newsday article “a plethora of (financial and accounting) horrors” his administration inherited from its immediate predecessor.

Augustine announced the establishment of forensic audits (of five programmes and projects initially), and warned if they revealed “any evidence of fraud and corruption…those…identified as…criminally liable (would) face the full brunt of the law.”

I said in my article that I was old and cynical (actually, I’m not so much old as ancient). I had heard promises like Augustine’s before, and I would “therefore be watching, and making my sentiments known.” What has been happening?

On September 20, Augustine informed us that his administration received a preliminary audit report on one of the five projects (road resurfacing) mentioned in his January statement. The details he gave of the report weren’t pretty. At best, they suggested massive and costly incompetence; at worst, even more massive corruption.

But if you point fingers at others, you must do everything in your power to ensure your own position is – to the best of your knowledge and ability – untainted. If not, you run the clear risk of being dismissed as being no different from those you’ve condemned, and therefore as hypocritical. Such an assessment carries obvious political and other implications.

And, indeed, Augustine’s administration is now being accused by its political opponents of the very sins it attributed to said opponents when they were in office. (Ironically, roads again hold a prominent place in the allegations.)

A roofing company is said to have received a contract for road resurfacing. Another company is said to have received approval for road construction within only 24 hours of its proposal being made. Trinidadian companies are said to be automatically favoured over Tobagonian.

I’m in no position to pronounce on the validity or otherwise of these charges.

What I can say is that, accurate or not, they are further eroding confidence in the administration’s approach to taxpayers’ money and good governance, and undermining public faith in the party’s 2021 campaign slogan “Leh we fix dis.”

And these charges come after the recent New York visit of an east Tobago choir, which involved expenditure large sums of taxpayers’ money for which no satisfactory explanations – at least, none that I find satisfactory – have yet been given.

I have already made a public call for an impartial investigation of the matter. I repeat that call.

The New York visit also brought into the public domain, the existence of divisions, personal and political, within the ruling PDP.

Could these divisions, which continue with constant sniping at the Executive Council, particularly Augustine, by the party’s political leader, adversely affect the widely-expressed desire for Tobago self-government?

Especially in small societies like Tobago, the question of personality looms large, and disturbing reports have been reaching me. Over many years, and in many places, I have had much opportunity to observe, and often to be appalled by, the sinuosities of human behaviour.

One characteristic generally emerges: the attitudinal change, usually rapid, in many of those who receive high, or important political preferment. A distance between them and the persons whose votes they sought now appears and is preserved.

On the hustings, they would address us as “brothers and sisters”; now they call us “ladies and gentlemen” (until they want votes again). They condescend and are insensitive, as we have recently seen.

Vocabulary changes: they no longer “ask” or “request”, they now “instruct” or “direct”. They are in control, in charge. They blame their public officers for their own shortfalls or failures.

Position and title overwhelm; the “do-you-know-who-I-am” syndrome asserts itself. Political expediency trumps the law, as we have also recently seen.

Hubris isn’t new, of course, or peculiar to TT.

In Shakespeare’s Julius Caesar, mostly set in Rome, Brutus is musing on Caesar’s increasing pomposity. He doesn’t dislike Caesar, but he worries that the latter’s growing self-importance and power could pose a threat to the health of the Roman republic.

Soon, persuaded that the threat is real, he is among those who knife Caesar to death. In TT politics, we prefer character assassination.

He says: “But ‘tis a common proof/That lowliness is young ambition’s ladder/Whereto the climber upward turns his face/But when he once attains the upmost round/He then unto the ladder turns his back/Looks into the clouds, scorning the base degrees/By which he did ascend…”

Shakespeare wrote those words in 1599 or 1600. Nearly 425 years later, tell me what is different.