President Granger on Integrity: Part 2

Apr 02, 2017 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

This is the conclusion of my last Sunday column, in which I looked at President Granger’s requirement of the possession of integrity for the next GECOM chairman. I examined the philosophical question of moral values that underpin integrity of character and asked the question; that based on what the philosophers defined moral values as, can it be found in the Granger Cabinet.
Today I undertake that specific examination. The consensus among philosophers, no matter how large is the difference between them, is that moral values have to carry obligation to others. This is where Machiavelli is not given credit. A closer examination of his seminal work, ‘The Prince’, would reveal that he prescribed certain obligations on the invader, one of which is the respect for the wives of the conquered. It is difficult to find consistent obligation to nation and citizens by the Granger Government, and there is a particular act of moral violation by the president himself.
I know this because I was involved in a direct incident with the President in which he refused his moral obligation to me. He even refused to apologize to me when I pointed out that he was blatantly wrong. Could this be an example of lack of integrity in the President himself? I find the episode so egregious that I believe it needs to be ventilated. I will repeat it again in these columns.
At the first press conference that he held as the leader of the AFC in February, Raphael Trotman spent a few minutes explaining to the press that President Granger, outside of the requirements of the Cummingsburg Accord, was generous to the AFC by selecting on his own, three AFC leaders to be Ministers.
Trotman named the three as the President’s own son-in-law, he, Trotman, and the Minister of Agriculture. Trotman went on to explain to the media that the portfolio of the business ministry of the President’s son-in-law was not catered for in the Cummingsburg Accord. He ended the discussion by exclaiming; “we are the three extras.” The next day, Denis Chabrol reported on that very statement of Trotman. Media houses have the tape. I have the tape.
I did a column and reported on what Trotman said after listening to the tape umpteen times. Enter President Granger. The Office of the President issued a press release and accused me of mischief by attributing the politics of patrimony to Mr. Granger, by saying that he gave his son-in-law a Cabinet post.
Trotman said the president made his son-in-law a Minister, Chabrol reported those exact words yet when I repeated that, President Granger accused me of mischief.
I wrote another column requesting the President and Minister Harmon to apologize to me, pointing out that the information is not false and was not invented by me. It was never done. Now against this background, am I not right to question President Granger’s possession of integrity?
Let’s look at the presence of integrity in the Granger Cabinet. The Government’s Director of Public Information, Imran Khan, who sits in the AFC’s executive, was running wild with a draft of a press release, showing it to the AFC leaders and shouting; “let’s reply to Freddie Kissoon.” Now mind you; reply not to Raphael Trotman or Denis Chabrol, but Freddie Kissoon. The press release stated that the AFC refutes the assertion made by me. I’m accused of an assertion I never made and the AFC knows that what it has accused me of is what its leader said.
This is the government that is demanding that the next GECOM chairman must possess integrity. I am absolutely sure that despite demands to define integrity, no minister or the President or Prime Minister is going to do so. Mr. Granger does not hold open press conferences (he has only kept one since he became President), so I cannot be there to question him on what Trotman, not Freddie Kissoon said.
I will meet Prime Minister Moses Nagamootoo and ask him, as the advisor and elder statesman of the AFC, if this is the way he wants to shape a legacy, by his party openly and shamelessly lying on a newspaper columnist.
But let’s get back to integrity. What is it? Whatever it is, it cannot involve leaders barefacedly lying on patriotic citizens of their country. The tragic thing about this repugnant and immoral situation is that integrity was one of the great themes of the 2015 election campaign, in which the populace was told to vote for the APNU+AFC coalition because they are the good guys with integrity and the PPP boys when in government had none.
The populace believed them. The rest is history.

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