Delroy Chuck

The People's National Party (PNP) should hang its head in shame. Desperately, it wants the nation to forget the dishonourable Trafigura scandal. But, the Trafigura issue cannot and must not go away until the truth is known.

The failed attempts of the PNP Government and its supporters to explain its wrongdoing and to send the message that wrongdoing can be rationalised are unworthy of a government in office. Using a dummy invoice to get a political donation is wrong. Getting an unsolicited gift while doing business with a person or company smacks of undue influence, bribery or skulduggery and is wrong.

Even the responses of the PNP reveal that the Trafigura payment or donation is wrong. When Colin Campbell resigned as PNP General Secretary and Minister of Information and Development, it was an acknowledgement of wrongdoing. When the PM, Portia Simpson Miller, instructed her party to return the $31 million dollars, it was an admission of wrongdoing. When the Attorney-General and Minister of Justice, A.J. Nicholson, apologised to the nation for speaking without getting the full details, he knew something was awfully wrong. And, even though in a telephone conversation with me, he denied admitting there was hanky-panky, the responses of the PNP suggest there was hanky-panky.

Dummy invoices

How then could government members have the gall to stand up in Parliament and attempt to justify the Trafigura gift to the party? K.D. Knight argued that both parties use dummy invoices as he sought to sanitise the donation and challenged anyone to stand up who did not do so. Well, among others, I stood up, as I have never used dummy invoices to get cash donations. To be sure, companies prefer to make payment for goods and services provided. So, for example, companies make payments to Berger Paints Ltd., on my behalf, which allows me to get paint to beautify and uplift my communities.

Drs. Omar Davies and Peter Phillips blamed the failure of the system and the lack of regulations controlling campaign financing for the Trafigura scandal. The PM did not see anything inappropriate with the Trafigura donation and lambasted the Leader of the Opposition for using the information, which she presumed came from the breach of banking confidentiality. Like other amoral supporters, the government members sought to neutralise the immorality of the Trafigura donation by equating it with the breach of banking regulations. If only the Govern-ment side had come clean, apologise and admit wrongdoing, it would have demonstrated that it still retained some strands of moral fibre. Instead, it sidestepped the central issues, the moral challenges, and waffled its way around the obvious wrongdoing in the Trafigura issue. When will we hear the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth?

Jamaicans everywhere now wonder what moral authority our Government possesses to fight corruption, shady deals and crime. When wrongs occur they must be condemned and corrected. They are not resolved and prevented by revealing that others also do it or pointing to other wrongdoing. Wrongdoings are resolved and avoided by taking responsibility, and exposing and punishing them in whatever form, source or size they occur. Justifying wrongdoing erodes our sense of right and wrong, and sends the mistaken signal to other wrongdoers in our society that they too can defend their dishonesty, malpractices and illicit deals.

Moral path looks dim

Jamaica's moral path looks so dim. When right-thinking members of our society, especially in the churches and media, remain silent in the face of our moral indiscretion and some even join with the ruling party to justify the Trafigura donation, it becomes clear that partisan interests take priority over what is nationally and morally right. Yes, Jamaica can only recover from its abysmal path when the silent majority wakes up, speaks out and acts decisively to rescue the nation from the narrow partisan interests of the political cultists in our midst.

Delroy Chuck is an attorney-at-law and Member of Parliament. He can be contacted by email at delchuck@hotmail.com.