I continue to cry for my country

After reading last week’s newspapers I had to seriously ask myself if it was really our SVG they were talking about. But really, why should this have surprised me when for sometime these kinds of shenanigans have been floating around, papered over by deceitful ramblings and much ‘ole talk,’ designed to capture minds that have obviously fallen asleep. The Vincentian newspaper carried a detailed piece on the Auditor General’s report about the incredible happenings at our Consulate in New York.{{more}} All papers covered the issue of missing funds at the Registry, with a brief reference to what is called the Passport Bill, which at that point had not as yet been discussed in Parliament. I was particularly attracted to the editorial of the Vincentian, captioned “Misdeeds by public officers.” It attempted to pull out the connecting threads in all these stories that keep surfacing and then dying, or perhaps stuffed under piles of nothingness. It is one thing to report on misdeeds within the public service, but one has to draw attention to the pattern which has been developing. This is what the editorial did.

Hopefully, this would provide us with a talking point that will take us beyond the wild speculation that often exists and expose those whose duty it is to defend the indefensible and explain things away, in the process giving strange meanings to words that will baffle the imagination and choke the English language. The “editorial” makes the point that we often “get entangled in the political ‘goings and comings’ that are wont to characterise any discussion on the matter therein losing sight of the broader ramifications for the state.”

It brings attention also to what appears to be becoming a norm – the misdeeds of public officers that “remain unattended to by enforcement of the relevant law(s) (or perhaps) are simply brushed over by a shuffling of those officers caught doing wrong.” The point was made that wrong will always be wrong “regardless of how much those who are responsible for the safeguard of public funds and institutions want to (dis) colour it…” It brings out, too, the important point that quite often the “truthfulness of the misdeeds is never made known in wholesome measure, resulting in wild speculation among the populace.”

The front page of the Vincentian gave detailed coverage to the Audit Report on the operations of the New York Consulate that pointed to disorganisation and lack of substantiation of transactions, along with multiple cases of the disregard for procedure and order. It concludes that “someone somewhere in the scheme of things has been asleep for some time now.” It then asks rhetorically if it was too much to ask for the recall of the Consul General.

There are so many questions that arise from all of this, but there are those who do not want us to ask questions, as if these were private matters to be settled in whatever way by a select crew. Really, the first and overriding question is, have all the systems broken down? The Auditor General’s report on the New York Consulate seems to point that way. How could these irregularities have gone on for so long, even though some of them, it seems, had been brought to the attention of the authorities? A similar question can be asked about the missing Registry funds. How long has this been going on? How is all of this possible? Something is seriously wrong somewhere, for one gets the impression that some individuals within the public service feel that they can do what they want to without the fear of having to give account. Are we in a jungle situation where the most powerful and selfish are able to do what they want to? Are these matters really of concern to us, or are we beginning to see them as things that we expect to happen, run-of-the-mill, perhaps?

News has been floating around about certain financial discrepancies in the financial affairs of the Football Association. The microscope is going to be focused there, as it should, but do we bring the same concerns when government funds are involved or do we allow partisan sentiments to get in the way? All of this goes beyond the particular issues and support the view previously stated, that something is fundamentally wrong somewhere.

Something is broken that needs to be fixed urgently.

In another few months we will be celebrating the 35th anniversary of the recovery of our independence. It’s a big thing to some of us. We will wear national colours and proudly display in whatever way our ‘Vincentianness’. But are we seriously satisfied with the state of things 35 years after we embarked on a journey to lift our nation, with a stated determination to uplift the lives of all of our people? We had, we felt, rid ourselves of colonial domination and vowed to keep our country ever free, free not only of colonial domination, but also of the many ills that have been creeping in. Or is the display we put on at Independence a fake? Something which we feel we have to do, but which deep down has little meaning? I cry for my country, because we

have not been doing a good job of what we are expected to do.

Dr Adrian Fraser is a social commentator and historian.