PIARCO CASE: HOW POLITICS RUINED JUSTICE

PATRICK Manning had a clear-cut political strategy.

“Always go for the top,” Manning once explained, “and the rest would crumble.”

He said that was the approach he and sidekick Dr. Lenny Saith adopted against A.N.R. Robinson after the PNM rout of December 1986.

It was also the tactic he employed against Basdeo Panday after getting back into national office in 2001 after the UNC crumbled in government after its historic 2000 electoral victory.

As soon as he returned as Prime Minister, Manning set up the Anti-Corruption Investigation Bureau (ACIB), a political hit squad that reported to the Attorney General and not the Police Commissioner.

The ACIB set to work and in September 2002, Panday was charged with breach of the Integrity in Public Life Act for failure to declare a London bank account for three successive years.

Chief Magistrate Sherman McNicholls handed Panday the maximum fine, with alternative jail terms of two years for each of the three offences, to run concurrently.

In another matter, the Privy Council ruled that McNicholls was “hopelessly compromised” because he had sought help from the Attorney General on a land deal.

The chief magistrate was in the PNM Government’s back pocket.

The Panday verdict was eventually quashed.

But Manning was not done yet.

A PNM Minister once said “All ah we t’ief,” but Manning placed no focus on corruption allegations under that party’s administration.

Instead, the ACIB political assassins were sent after Manning’s nemesis.

In 2004, Panday and a slew of UNC kingpins were hit with a bundle of charges, alleging bid-rigging in the $1.6 billion Piarco Airport terminal building project.

Over two decades, the legal case saw a sweep of hi-jinks, leading to the expected decision of Director of Public Prosecutions Roger Gaspard to pull the plug because key witnesses had died or were aged and ailing.

The Section 34 scorcher was part of the 20-year escapade.

Three months ago, defence attorney, British King’s Counsel Edward Fitzgerald wrote to Gaspard alleging political interference in the Piarco proceedings.

The investigations took place “at a time when the PNM was seeking to ensure its success in the next general election,” Fitzgerald said.

The “only reasonable inference” that could be drawn was that the charges were “politically motivated.”

Manning and two successive attorneys general had publicly imputed guilt against the accused, Fitzgerald stated.

The charges tarnished Panday, and may have aided Manning’s 2007 re-election, but he squandered his political success with a snap 2010 poll, that ended his career.

When he died on July 2016, six weeks short of his 70^th birthday, Manning was lauded as a decent, honourable politician.

The ACIB was involved in other politically-flavoured work, and only in 2019 was placed under the supervision of the Commissioner of Police.

With the discontinuance of the Piarco matter, taxpayers would never know whether their money was misused.

Equally, the big-name accused would not get the satisfaction of hearing “not guilty” verdicts.

But old habits die hard.

The current administration has spent heavily — $42 million to British probers alone – to zap political opponents.

But the much-promised whistleblower legislation is not yet law, and the procurement statute is weak.

The procurement regulator says an average of $5.2 billion is lost each year to corruption and inefficiency.

Various forms of corruption are being “normalised” in Trinidad and Tobago and the rest of the Caribbean, the British Guardian newspaper noted last weekend.

So, too, are hatchet jobs, vendettas, and witch-hunts.

Naked politics trumps – and ruins – justice!