Latest update March 19th, 2024 12:59 AM
Apr 25, 2017 Features / Columnists, Peeping Tom
What happens if a public servant sees something happening that is wrong, complains about it – not once but twice – only to find that nothing is being done about the matter? What is the public servant supposed to do? Forget that it ever happened and continue to be part of something which the public servant believes is against protocol.
What happens if the public servant believes what is happening is against the law? Would it be wrong for that public servant to complain to higher authorities?
What happens if no satisfaction is given to that public servant, should that person not have a moral option of going to the media and exposing what the public servant believes is a misdeed.
A strong case can be made out that if the superiors of the public servant were condoning certain actions, then there can be nothing wrong in principle of going higher.
The public servant cannot be blamed for the matter appearing in the press. This is tantamount to blaming a rape victim because she chose to wear revealing clothes. The victim should not be blamed. Who should share responsibility are those who have been aware of the problem and took no action to address it.
The APNU+AFC government has developed a reputation of penalizing persons simply because an incident which those persons may have knowledge of somehow appears in the media. There is a well-known case in which someone was dismissed after exposing corruption, simply because the matter ended up in the media, even though the person had nothing at all to do with the publication and there was never any investigation into those matters. The person was punished in order to get at the newspapers; to send a message that exposure has consequences.
Guess what happened to those involved in the corruption? Nothing!
These things are being documented and are likely to find their way into the United States Human Rights Report. It is clear that persons are being victimized because of the role of the media in exposing corruption within this present government, just as it was under the previous administration.
Imagine what would have happened if the media had not been exposing certain things. Do you think that the government would have taken action had the media not publicized certain matters? Without the media, a great many wrongs would be swept under the carpet. Without the media, a great many persons would face graver victimization than they have faced.
There is no evidence that there was any leak to the media, in the case in which a nurse was transferred from a hospital to a clinic. The media carried a story which revealed that the nurse had written to a number of persons on the matter. The leak could have been anyone who would have been privy to the correspondence.
But even if there had been a leak from source, what is legally and morally wrong in so doing?
The only United States President to have been impeached and removed from office was Richard Nixon. His downfall came about because of the unlawful actions which he was undertook. A team of reporters exposed the Watergate scandal. One of those reports had a contact inside the White House whom he referred to as Deep Throat, who was so outraged about what was going on that he leaked information to the reporter thereby exposing what remains the biggest political scandal in the United States of America. Now what would have happened if Deep Throat had not exposed what was happening?
If you see something that is happening and you believe it is a crime, you cannot turn away from it and say you never saw it. That would be an obstruction of justice. You have a duty, a legal duty, to cooperate with the police.
By similar logic, if something is happening that you believe is against the law and if nobody is doing anything about it, then what is wrong with going to the media. I believe that once it is established that your actions prevented or put a stop to a crime, then you should be rewarded rather than punished.
The media can help bring about public justice where it would otherwise be suppressed and if something is happening that is not right, people should have the legal and moral right to ask the media to do something about it.
But do not tell that to the APNU+AFC who promised a new political culture. They are simply an exchange of the PPP/C.
Listen to the man that is throwing Guyanese bright future away
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