T&T’s systems have failed post-independence test

The alleged corruption of public officials of the Estate Management Business Development Company (EMBD) and those involved in the then-government’s Life Sport Programme are but two of several matters of the kind which the investigative authorities have not been able to advance to the stage of securing a definitive judgment from the courts.

In the instance of the EMBD matter, the investigation surrounds questions of the proper and efficient spending of $549 million. Regarding the Life Sport programme, the figure is $345 million. These are not piddling sums even by today’s standards, when the national budget is calculated at elevated figures of between $55-$60 billion. The fact is that before the petro dollars flooded the economy in the early to mid-1970s, the total national budget was counted in hundreds of millions in comparison to the current allocations.

After a decade of corruption allegations, investigations and political prancing up and down by politicians pointing figures at each other, the population has not been able to get even a few satisfactory answers to the claims raised against institutions and their leaders involved in the expenditure of exorbitant sums.

With regard to the details of the two matters reported on in the Sunday Guardian, the fact remains that there are allegations of large-scale corruption committed not only against the State but against young people who were deprived of the full value of the programmes, as portions of the sums allocated were allegedly spent for personal benefit.

With regard to the allocation of expenditure on the roads and infrastructure of the country, the society knows not how much of the more than half a billion dollars went genuinely into the always much-needed infrastructure repair and construction, as opposed to corruptly spent millions.

Contemplate, for instance, what could have been different today if all the funds allocated to the Life Sport programme had been fully and productively invested in the lives of young people, susceptible to falling off the edge.

But let us put aside for the moment, the details of the matters hanging in the air without resolution and a future clouded by uncertainty as to whether the investigations will ever be carried to the full limit. The failures, as listed above, are indictments of the political, legal and administrative systems of Independent T&T.

What those failures do is cast a lingering shadow over those who have been at the centre of governance in post-independence Trinidad and Tobago. Truth be told, it is the failures of independent T&T in many instances that render us incapable of being critical of the colonial governments which went before.

The inability to bring those alleged and others who may also have been identified in corrupt practices, if the matters had been fully prosecuted by the courts of the land, exposes not only a political and administrative bureaucracy unable to cope, but a society that has not crossed over into responsible behaviours as a nation emerging from colonial rule.

Contemplate also, that the two above-named projects are merely those which have come to the fore at this point, but have been preceded and followed since by several others.