Come Tuesday morning yet another government will table yet another commission of inquiry report. The House promises political fireworks, polemic bullets and maybe even a bombshell or two. But will the government have the sense to do what needs to be done or are they only interested in witch hunting the creator of the Rochamel scandal, perchance to run him out of politics forever?

It would be unfair to say the current United Workers Party government has no intention of implementing the recommendations of the Ramsahoye Report, but it would not be unreasonable. After all, not one St Lucian government has ever implemented Inquiry recommendations—the new stricter rules could tie their own hands and prevent them from profiting from their own mismanagement and maladministration.

Flashback to April 1998: The report of the Commission of Inquiry was written, Gazetted and on the verge of being released. The nation was high on the hope that things were finally changing for the better in St Lucia. Kenny Anthony was literally Obama before Barack was. The implicit promise of the government was that the fast and loose tactics of the former UWP government would be a thing of the past. Corruption was supposed to be over.

But Sir Louis Blom-Cooper warned that corruption and mismanagement would continue in St Lucia’s government as long as things remain just the way they are. So said, so done. At the time, he was the sole commissioner of an inquiry into a trio of events in public administration in St Lucia in the 1990s. The Labour government was still new, riding high with a 16-1 parliamentary majority with the power to unilaterally change the Constitution in the best interests of itself.

Of course, the recommendations of the Blom-Cooper report were never implemented. The “culture of studied indifference” to corruption continued as if Blom-Cooper had never mentioned. In fact, by the time he had wrapped up his special assignment, the fiasco known as Rochamel, was well underway.
Kenny Anthony had already signed the first loan guarantee for Pigeon Island Hotel Ltd.

Fast forward to 2009. Today. The last time the Lower House of Assembly met, tempers were so high that one member openly defied the Speaker. And he was the speaker’s deputy. The prime minister set the tone, ignoring the schedule in order to make political hay over the Ramsahoye report. The opposition leader slammed his hand into the table demanding the release of the report. The leaders had set the tone. Marcus Nicholas, merely took the level of parliamentary debate into the toilet!

The time before that, Richard Frederick and Kenny Anthony duked it out over a number of contentious issues, not the least of which was the halay-kasay budget presented by the prime minister. By the time Frederick had finished his presentation, most viewers and listeners had forgotten that the meeting true purpose of the day’s House Meeting.

These two rounds of parliamentary debate have characterized MPs, not as analysts and watchdogs, but as political assassins, always creeping, trying to stab each other in the back. Or the front. Between the legs. Or wherever, so to speak.

Here comes round three. And if the last two meetings of the House were any indication, this one is going to be better than the Tyson-Hollyfield rematch. On Tuesday, the nation will have the opportunity to decide for itself whether or not the Ramsahoye Commission of Inquiry was worth the money. The government is expected to table the report and bring a resolution to condemn Kenny Anthony and his administration for the monies lost in Rochamel, the NCA and the cost overruns on the Soufriere-Vieux Fort highway.

Gone are the days when the Lower House was a fairly quiet place where even the opposition often voted for government measures like Rochamel and RDP 1 and 2. Politics, someone once said, is war. The same rules apply to both. On Tuesday, even the rules of war might go out the window.

Introducing the challengers: in the red corner, the former government and current opposition St Lucia Labour Party led by their super heavyweight champion Kenny Anthony. And in the yellow corner (no corny cowardice jokes, please!) the champion bubblers, the ruling United Workers Party led by the Caribbean’s best known accidental prime minister, Stephenson King.

What kind of fight do we have here tonight, J?

I don’t know. I’ll tell you the truth, Rick, the fact that the government is tabling the report months after it was leaked out of the prime minister’s office is more of a story than the report itself. Everyone knows what is in it—even though interpretation depends on the tint of the glasses. The government might have been better off just ignoring the whole thing and pretending it never blew three million dollars away without even asking the most important question: Why the hell did Frenwell get a loan guarantee?

On Tuesday, if the report is finally tabled, the true reasons and consequences of the latest commission of inquiry will be revealed, no matter what the government and the opposition do to obscure the truth.

What is the government going to do now that they are forced to release a report which everyone has read? What the hell can they do?

The report gave them nothing to work with. While it criticized Anthony’s actions, it does nothing to the former prime minister that Blom-Cooper didn’t do to the UWP when Kenny Anthony was at the wheel. In fact, it absolved him “criminal wrongdoing and civil liability.” It blamed the system, more than anything or anyone, for allowing the kinds of actions that Anthony committed during his term. It recommended what Blom-Cooper recommended a decade ago—system adjustments. Without changing the system, each government will be as fast and loose as the other. Everything will smell like corruption. So said, so done.

With no criminal or civil liability, noted the report, it would seem like any further action against Anthony is just politically motivated prolongation of the process. This issue is extinct. The commission of inquiry itself killed it. I suspect that anyone who expects the government to do anything more than blow smoke and rattle sabers is going to be severely disappointed.

Instead of focusing on what really needs to be done, the government is going to pass a resolution to condemn the actions of Kenny Anthony. The actions. Not the man. The man, according to the report, did nothing criminal. In other words he was just being a regular West Indian prime minister instead of the prime minister he was elected to be.

This issue has been so over-politicized that it is hard to remember that it is as simple as Blom-Cooper made it, more than ten years ago. There is now only one sensible thing to do about the Ramsahoye Report—implement the recommendations. Political strife be damned. What this island needs to improve the state of governance is not more witch hunting, but better structures, stronger laws, stiffer penalties and less power for political paragons who are only interested in prolonging their half-lives by attacking their enemies.

The Ramsahoye report recommended several very specific things that may help discourage future prime ministers from using loopholes and wiggle room to do things which should not be done.

According to the report, which everyone has (which may or may not be the one that the government plans to table on Tuesday): “Every guarantee given by the Government of St Lucia . . . must be put before Parliament for approval.” That regulation is already in place. What is not in place is the penalty for playing fast and loose with it.

The report also recommends that, “There should be no time limit for the recovery of public funds.” This also requires some new and stronger legislation.

“Public officers at the highest departmental level should be involved in the execution and monitoring of agreements made with government and no liability of government should be sanctioned without the express agreement of the law officers of St Lucia,” the report’s recommendations continue.

Quite apart from matters which require new legislation, Ramsahoye also recommended more detailed procedure in the design and implementation of government projects in several different ways. Perhaps most importantly, the report says that “Management officials should be held accountable civilly for loss arising from breach of responsibilities assigned.”

There is a list of 19 very specific recommendations in the Ramsahoye Report, none of which have been fully reported by the press and none of which will get the attention they deserve from the government.

But of course, who listens to commissioners of inquiry? Compton didn’t. Kenny didn’t. Why would King? Recommendations always seek to limit the power of the ministers of government, grant more power to top civil servants and eliminate the loopholes that allow mismanagement, maladministration and whatever other things that are not specifically corruption by another name. There is not a politician alive today who would disempower himself and give that power to some civil servant.

Instead of implementing the recommendations, the government will condemn the actions of the Kenny Anthony administration. A whole lot of good that will do. It’s like impeaching Bill Clinton for having extra-marital affairs. They all do it, they all flout the rules at their own convenience. Then, they will proceed to try to make more political mileage out of what used to be an important issue but is now a dead one. If St Lucians are stupid enough to buy it, the UWP government will keep rehashing Rochamel and RDP 1 and 2 while their own projects (the Daher building, the Allan Bousquet highway rehabilitation) prove they are no better. Talk about mem bet, mem pwel.
Meanwhile the nation at large is more interested in the Guinness Undisputed promotion than in anything to with Rochamel. The people have lost faith. For then, one political animal is better or worse than the other. The only people who stay loyal to parties now are the brainwashed and the vengeful.

The funny thing is that one stupid comment about the issue of fingerprinting is now far more important to the future of Kenny Anthony than all the articles, comments and reports about Rochamel ever were.
If Kenny Anthony succumbs to the effect of his own statements, he will have done himself in more efficiently than all King’s horses and all King’s men could have and the purpose of the Ramsahoye Commission of Inquiry would have been achieved making the entire $3 million affair most redundant.

Fortunately, the government is not the only responsible party in society. The media, the people and civil society can still influence things so that the island actually gets on the road to good governance.
With that in mind, it is up to these three parties to apply the pressure that forces government to do the right thing. We paid $3 million for Ramsahoye’s recommendations and we should be damned if we throw them away without trying them out. Between the media, the people and civil society, we need to shove the Ramsahoye recommendations up their asses for the rest of the their term or until the recommendations are implemented—whichever comes first.