Superheroes or Crooks- My column 27 September 2011

In the pantheon of CLICO superheroes, one man inevitably stands out, but CLICO's Superman did not act alone. Any examination of his heroics must unmask and punish his helpers. His trinity was complete with Wonder Woman, corporate secretary extraordinaire and Spiderman, the political party treasurer whose webs pulled remarkable deals together.
The missing comic book characters are the quack pack of regulators anaesthetised as hard assets exchanged places with runny IOU's. Followers of Sir Anthony Colman's Commission of Enquiry salivate as superheroes and villains are indistinguishable. But unless it unmasks public officials this enquiry is for entertainment purposes only. It is juicy but losing a lifetime of savings is no laughing matter.
The serious fact is that much of Superman's ventures were kept behind the closed doors of privately-held companies. In normal circumstances owners of private companies are entitled to run their companies as they see fit, including into the ground. All the law requires of most of these companies is that the annual returns are filed and that statutory payments are remitted as appropriate.

Back to Gene Miles: Corrupt Trinidad and Tobago- My column 20 September 2011

After Gene Miles, the modern design of governance is for the political financiers to take a first charge on the Treasury and for public officials to enforce the lien. Read the Hansard and Budget speeches in particular, every page promises to bring law and order; to make things better and to allocate blame to the other side. Licensing office remains non-collared, its propensity for corruption merely a parcelling of the fat to feed the epaulettes. And there are more epaulettes feeding at the country's gates, people and cargo, going and coming, paying and promising to pay. Foreign sex workers are hounded out of the bawdy houses but nobody checks the boudoir for customs and immigration laundry. With reckless indifference there's always one for the master, one for the dame and one for the little boy who lives down the lane.

Masters, dames and little boys associated with the main parties in the Parliament are fighting civil and criminal battles for services rendered. Former ministers are charged and acquitted. Persons placed in significant state positions operate under various questions. Each one proceeding until apprehended. In 2009 journalist Clint Chan Tack detailed the corruption, citing parts of Ryan's work, Eric Williams: The Myth and the Man, asking how much Williams knew.

To find the root of criminality Prof Ryan must revisit Williams, the earliest purveyor of Teflon coats for public office holders. And he must examine the consequences of the State's own breakaway from the fundamentals of law and order, the emergence of parallel rules, organisations and expectations in and of public office and the vagaries of madam justice, more blindsided than blindfolded. He must ask about slush accounts, hush-money for thieves and chile-mothers and State-operated treasure troves, each ostensibly ring-fenced by Corporation Sole. More hush money is promised by the Prime Minister.

Suriname: South America's hidden treasure- New York Times

Just 500,000 people live in Suriname, a country on South America’s northeastern shoulder about the size of Florida, but the variety of cultures they represent rivals those of much larger countries. The official language is Dutch, in a nod to Suriname’s past as a colony of the Netherlands, but on the streets of Paramaribo, the capital, one hears, in addition to Sranan Tongo, languages like Hindi and Javanese. Chinese characters decorate signs on casinos and corner stores. Motorized rickshaws called tuk-tuks speed past mosques and Hindu temples, giving Suriname a vaguely Asian feel. (With a name that rhymes with Vietnam, Hollywood seems to prefer it this way: the movie “The Silence of the Lambs” seems to suggest that Suriname is in Asia.) Suriname’s obscurity and charm, in an age in which frontiers seem to melt away at the click of a mouse, proves that there are still corners of the world that can provide surprise and adventure, even a bit of awe.

A scrip to scrap: Problems with the Financial Intelligence Unit- My column-13 September 2011

Forget the Prime Minister's Veto: Reloaded starring the veto of the choice for Director of the Financial Intelligence Unit (FIU). It's just a distracting sequel to Mr Manning's veto of appointments to the High Commission in London and the Commissioner of State Lands, both recently considered by the Privy Council. It follows an old script, but one which still ratchets up combatants already on political and ethnic high alert. In our embryonic war against crime there are more important matters for our big screen.

This is the sort of script to which the Minister of Finance will not be drawn, yet he landed the lackey's role. He failed to help the PM redraw constitutional lines on the nature of the veto. The July 2011 Privy Council decisions on the Manning vetoes explained the narrow nature of the limitations on the power of veto once the objection was of a general nature.

What the Constitution and Privy Council decisions do not offer the PM is the power to supplant the Public Service Commission's (PSC) choice with a personal preference. It is the current Government which gave the PSC the power to select the FIU's executive, only for the PM to turn around, undermine the PSC and disturb the separation of powers.

Artificial Intelligence- My column for 6 September 2011

Police intelligence has become an oxymoron. So suspect it is that trust and confidence in this roughly-hewn public emergency has disappeared. And the question is: have the crime bosses outsourced the clean-up of the lower levels of criminal organisations to the state? Clearly, the early emotional support for the state of public emergency has dampened. Imposed with an insufficiency of detail and justification, support was rooted in fear, vulnerability and desperation. But deployed to assail big drug stashes and dismantle gangs, the owner of the cocaine toted through the airport by a 19-year-old has not been held. Mysteries surrounding the big Monos Island cocaine bust are unsolved: "big fish" and "small fish" were prominent terms in that prosecution, without coincidence.