The only story I regret not writing

Debbie Jacob

IT’S BEEN a long time since I heard anyone mention the late, infamous government minister Johnny O’Halloran, but he always comes to mind when I think about the only story I have ever regretted not writing.

In 1984, when I arrived in Trinidad, O’Halloran’s name was everywhere. Bribery charges from the previous year ensured he was a hot newsworthy topic. His infamous schemes gradually slipped from our collective memory, but his legacy lives on.

The Parliament website sums him up in two sanitised sentences: “Mr John O'Halloran served as a Member of the House of Representatives and a Minister of Government. He is a featured parliamentary personality on the Parliament Channel.”

There is no mention of any work he ever did while serving in Parliament. Stories from the past say everyone knew about his nefarious deals and his nickname “Ten Percent,” the minimum amount he skimmed from every rotten deal he made – all right under prime minister Eric Williams’s nose.

He was the minister of petroleum and mines, a good place for his power and money-hungry self. He took his illegal cut in everything from construction to horse racing. Just to ensure he had the most despicable reputation possible, there was the cockfighting.

It was a bad look for the government, to say the least, but it all occurred simultaneously with the myth-making that protected Williams’s legacy and the notion he sold a nation that “money is no problem.”

As an anthropologist, I consider the symbolic, cultural effect of O’Halloran’s dishonesty. I think about it in stories that surface about rogue police officers committing crimes; in the ridiculous amount of money government pays for useless buildings that sit empty or under-utilised; in the inflated price it paid for those huge Trinidad and Tobago flags that looked pretty unfurling in the wind, but really symbolised how many people in power have felt that personal entitlement trumps honesty and patriotism.

It’s a lot to think about as the government laments our sorry state of finances. But back to the story I regret not writing.

In my early years as a journalist at the Trinidad Express in the late 80s when I had happily settled in as a feature writer, editor-in-chief Owen Baptiste decided to turn me into a news reporter.

Eventually, he shook his head, threw his hands up in despair, and said, “I give up. You turn everything you write into a feature. You will be a mediocre news writer, but an excellent feature writer.”

During that experiment, OB sent me on an assignment to cover a US economist who was in TT for some conference. I got my news story. Afterwards, we chatted, and he told me he came to Trinidad often for a comparative study he was doing on TT and Kuwait.

He said both countries were about the same size and had the same population. They had developed their oil industries about the same time. While Johnny O’Halloran was busy filling his pockets under Williams, the finance minister in charge of oil revenues in Kuwait operated under strict government rules and ultra-conservative economic measures. Kuwait wanted to protect its burgeoning oil fortune.

Stringent laws against corruption included the death penalty for stealing government money. The finance minister in Kuwait remained in charge of oil for about 20 years and then retired.

His parting report said that the money the Kuwaiti government thought it had made from oil was incorrect. The minister had been siphoning off money all those years. He confessed that he had invested that money abroad for Kuwait. His financial report showed that the Kuwaiti government had billions of dinars more than he had officially reported.

The minister risked his life and defied the government’s stringent economic policies to make Kuwait richer. The difference between TT and Kuwait was the way the two countries handled money. Kuwait had made sound economic decisions; TT had squandered its money.

That anecdote didn’t fit into the news story I had been asked to write. I filed it away in my mind, but I often think of the economist’s financial tale of two small oil countries and the divergent paths they took.

We had the same opportunities as Kuwait. Oil defined our economies. Kuwait thrived; TT stumbled, to say the least. O’Halloran faded into history, but left a lasting legacy of corruption, dishonesty, selfishness and entitlement. One person can make a huge difference in shaping a country. That’s the real story.