Trinidad & Tobago: Where’s the Integrity? · Global Voices
Transparency and good governance have been popular topics in the Caribbean blogosphere of late, thanks to stories on financial impropriety, concerns over massive spending of taxpayers’ dollars and anxiety over freedom of the press.
The latest debacle over integrity (or lack thereof?) comes from Trinidad and Tobago, where, in the last few weeks, a second attempt to establish an Integrity Commission has come to a crashing halt amidst revelations that the Chair of the Commission, a Catholic priest, had committed acts of plagiarism in his weekly column for a local newspaper. To add insult to injury, Fr. <PERSON> claims that he drew this act to the attention of President <PERSON>, whose job it is to appoint members of the Commission, and was told it was “okay” – this decision allegedly from a man who spent years at the helm of the University of the West Indies. Father <PERSON> has since resigned from his post, citing Canon Law as the primary reason for his withdrawal.
To add even more fuel to the fire, the journalist who drew attention to the plagiarism in the first place, has been fired from his post at Newsday, supposedly in retaliation for his actions – and even though the Media Association of Trinidad and Tobago appears to have remained silent on the issue, bloggers certainly have not, even posting their views on Twitter.
<PERSON>, a Trinidadian journalist-turned bogger who now resides in Barbados, has been following developments from the outset. 957
As early as May 7, he published a letter he wrote to local media houses:
My colleague <PERSON> quite responsibly brought to national attention the use by putative Integrity Commission Chair, <PERSON>, of arguments and language copied from (1) an op-ed piece in the New York Times of 9 December; and (2) a column by <PERSON> published in the National Catholic Weekly on 30 March.
I invite citizens to locate on the Net and compare a column written by <PERSON> in the New York Times on 7 May, 2006, called, “Marshmallows and Public Policy” with one titled, “The Marshmallow Test” published a week later in the Guardian under the byline of the good <PERSON>.
If once is mistake and twice, habit, would three times be standard operational procedure? What does this reveal about the integrity of Mr <PERSON>? As with governments, do countries get Integrity Commissions they deserve?
Fellow blogger <PERSON> backs up B.C.'s position in a post from the same date:
Somehow I don’t feel a self-confessed, under-pressure, serial plagiarist should be allowed to even come within 1000-feet of a member of the Integrity Commission much less chair it.
If <PERSON> didn’t point out the plagiarism to The Father would he have confessed? That is the big question but the answer seems horribly obvious. And as <PERSON> said ‘I found the apology unconvincing and I would have let the matter rest there, except I am now wondering what will happen when, as chairman of The Integrity Commission, Mr. <PERSON>, finds himself under pressures rather more intense that writing a weekly newspaper column.’ Please note the inverted commas and thus no plagiarism.
<PERSON>, himself no stranger to being fired from mainstream media gigs, continued to keep a close eye on the situation, eventually posting this blog entry once he noticed that “Newsday has not run my erstwhile newspaper and still Humanist Association colleague <PERSON>’s column for the last two Fridays. I suspect there is a connection to <PERSON> having done Trinidad & Tobago and the world a favour by uncovering the hypocrisy of our own plagiarizing priest/wannabe Integrity Commission Chair, the good <PERSON> ‘Hey, I Completely Forgot About Copying That David Brooks Column’ <PERSON>.” He then goes on to publish the third column of <PERSON>'s that had failed to appear in print.
Other bloggers soon rallied to <PERSON>'s cause once it was confirmed that the journalist had indeed been fired. <PERSON> writes:
And so after two weeks of suspense – literally, too, just leaving him dangling, not using columns he dutifully supplied, without the common decency of an explanation – the Trinidadian newspaper, Newsday, has sacked <PERSON>, easily its best writer and the only semi-public figure to have displayed any integrity in the whole Integrity Commission bullshit affair; and you have to take your hat off to Trinidad; nowhere else would have the gumption to publicly punish someone for doing the right thing. 892