Terminate a monster in its shell or it will come back to haunt you

Dear Editor,

Recent disclosure about a Trinidadian company taking Guyoil to court over the termination of a contract it signed with Guyoil, allegedly because the company refused to offer a bribe to a minister with responsibility to overlook Guyoil, offers possibilities to the president to make or break the Coalition Government in this election season. If the president is serious about a platform on tackling corruption, here is a golden opportunity to prove to the electorate that he can metamorphosed out of his cocoon of silence to appear as presidential material, with the will to tackle corruption in the eyes of the electorate.

In the beginning there was Durban Park, monies spent there is still to be accounted for, the drug bond fiasco, the new harbour bridge feasibility and design, the signing bonus, sole sourcing by the ministry of health, Boom out at Providence and a host of others where allegations of misconduct or corruption were levelled at some of his ministers. Not once had Granger ordered any investigation to ascertain the facts of any of these allegations in an attempt to inspire the populace into believing that a punitive response was forthcoming. Over the last four years Granger had demonstrated that he lacked the opulence to control the people under his umbrella. In the last four years, as the president, Granger’s actions seems to suggest that his understanding of being presidential means doing what he wants to do and not what the people or Constitution require him to do – being autocratic rather than democratic.

Now that elections are approaching Granger ought to be cognizant of the fact that his ascending to the presidency was not some form of “manifest destiny”, it was as a result of popular vote by the minutest of margin. Has he or his Government done enough over those four years to inspire the electorate to maintain or increase that margin? I think not. The “man in the street” is ready to utter a famous phrase signalling the fall of the Babylonian Empire, “mene mene tekel” (You have been weighed on the scales and found wanting) in rejection of the Coalition.

The Trinidadian company contract termination by Guyoil, allegedly because the company refused to offer a bribe to the subject Minister offers President Granger a glorious opportunity to turn the perception of the electorate in favour of the Coalition. Granger, seemingly reliance on new promises to propel the Coalition to victory will only have the effect of “seeds planted on Stony soil” on the electorate since no concerted attempt was made to keep the promises made in 2015. The public wants to see action and the time is rife- with impending elections looming on the horizon. If the president has the fortitude to calI on SOCU to investigate this matter and roll a single head of his administration in this opportune moment, it could earn the Coalition a dividend of 30,000 votes from the electorate that would not be forthcoming in his silence and inaction against corruption.

Should the president refuse this opportunity, it would be perceived that the president is afraid that the one rolled head may be inclined to sing like a Robin, exposing a hornets nest of corruption in high places. Failure to attempt to nip corruption in the bud may have resulted in the accumulation of skeletons in the Cabinet’s closets. In this scenario, Granger may be more willing to take the Coalition’s” boat over the falls” rather than capitalizing on this opportunity to fake a stand against corruption. When you fail to terminate a monster in the shell, it will always come back to haunt you.

Rudolph Singh