by Richard Coulson
THE famous French diplomat Maurice de Talleyrand had a terse retort for his boss, Napoleon Bonaparte, when he committed an international blunder by having a popular rival assassinated, nearly starting a war.
“Sire,” said Talleyrand, “it was worse than a crime, it was a mistake.”
Talleyrand had no use for morality or pesky legalities; he was only concerned about the wisdom of government policies. The actions of Minister Jerome Fitzgerald should be judged in the same way. Whether or not his public disclosure of private papers will be judicially labelled a crime, his burning desire to show off these papers to the public was a profound mistake, one that questions his judgment to serve as a cabinet minister.
What was he trying to prove when he dramatically announced his documentary discovery to the House of Assembly back in March? With patriotic zeal, he wanted nothing less than to warn us of a plot to bring down the Government – “destabilisation” and “overthrow” were his words, which could well mean sedition. And who were the dangerous revolutionaries behind so vile a scheme? None other than the licensed charity Save the Bays, its backer Louis Bacon, and its advisors and legal counsel.
As soon as Mr Fitzgerald started disclosing confidential documents, House Speaker Kendal Major should have shut him off, keeping the whole matter neatly within parliamentary bounds. But, inexperienced or cowed by the Fitzgerald rhetoric, Dr Major let him ramble on with a confused diatribe against a host of parties, including the Free National Movement. It was eventually revealed that the incendiary papers simply arose from the long-running dispute involving Peter Nygard’s alleged land accretions, with its many colourful off-shoots of hired hit-men, etc.
To inflate this environmental controversy into a plot to destroy the Government was an absurdity created solely by Mr Fitzgerald. We never heard any plot fears from the Prime Minister or the Minister of National Security or the CID. At most, the disclosures might have cast doubts on certain Progressive Liberal Party politicians, like Mr Fitzgerald himself, known to have accepted Nygard’s hospitality. He was entitled to defend his own reputation, but not to escalate his personal standing into a national issue. He knew if he brought any legal charge of sedition based on these papers, he would be laughed out of court.
And now we see another mistake-worse-than-a-crime: the Attorney-General spending public funds to defend, not the House of Assembly, but just Mr Fitzgerald personally from the consequence of his own rash actions. Of course he has the right to legal counsel; maybe his fellow MPs, keen on Parliamentary Privilege, will chip in to defray his costs. Why should his defence be paid with the people’s money?
Maybe we will see a test case whether misuse of public funds is both a mistake and a crime.
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Mr. Coulson has had a long career in law, investment banking and private banking in New York, London, and Nassau, and now serves as director of several financial concerns and as a corporate financial consultant. He has recently released his autobiography, A Corkscrew Life: Adventures of a Travelling Financier.
