The Editor, Sir:

I refer to the article by your columnist and my good friend and colleague, Delroy Chuck, published in The Gleaner of October 25, 2006, and wonder whether he would be taking such a definitive (and I daresay nauseatingly self-righteous) stance as to the absolute wrongness of the acts committed in the Trafigura affair, if it were his party which had so 'transgressed'.

Delroy and his party are of course entitled to seek to make as much political capital as they can from the affair. But for him to pontificate, as he does in said article, as to how 'dim the moral path of the entire society looks' in light of what he perceives as the 'amoral' reaction of whole sections of it to the Trafigura affair - and to imply (as he seems to be doing) that only abject confession, penitence, prostration and absolution can bring about a proper resolution of the matter, is surely to overstate the moral certitudes surrounding the acts involved in the affair, and to blow it out of all proportion.

Surely the way forward in attempting to resolve the matter is not assume some moral 'politically correct' position, and apply it to past acts, but to seek to come to some consensus on what should be/is morally and legally acceptable in these matters and then to enact effective legislation to seek to enforce the agreed standards.

I am, etc.,

RUDOLPH SMELLIE

62 Duke Street

Kingston