by TERRENCE W. FARRELL
Presentation to Sir Ellis Clarke Memorial Conference
‘Respect Life: Promote Morals and Values’
October 5th 2013
Sir Ellis
I am delighted to speak at this 2013 edition of the Sir Ellis Clarke Memorial Conference. Sir Ellis was a very special citizen of Trinidad and Tobago. We all know the critical role he played in crafting this country’s Independence Constitution, his outstanding service as a lawyer and diplomat and then as Governor General and the first President of the Republic. Until well into his winter years he was the ‘go-to’ constitutional law expert whenever difficult issues arose, and he never failed to provide insight and wisdom. In fact those two words – insight and wisdom — summarise what he brought to his public life.
Sir Ellis was a full generation ahead of me, but I did have the pleasure of gaining the benefit of his insight and wisdom when we were establishing the St Mary’s College Hall of Fame in 1997 and we consulted both Sir Ellis and Fr Lai Fook on the structure and modus operandi of the Hall of Fame. We knew then that he would have been among the first inductees. He of course demurred and recused himself when his name was, inevitably, advanced for induction.
Sir Ellis also brought a bonhomie and conviviality to his job and it was clear that he loved life and enjoyed it to the full. But Sir Ellis was also a devout Catholic, though he did not wear his faith on his sleeve. His acts of generosity with his time and his talents were done without fanfare.
Defining the Scope of the Discussion
The third pastoral priority which emerged from the last synod is the ‘Regeneration of Morals and Values in Our Society’. This statement assumes that morals and values in our society have been so significantly eroded that they are in need of ‘regeneration’. I would like to make two preliminary observations in order to define the scope of my discussion. First, I think we need to be careful not to romanticise the ‘old time days’. Every generation seems to think that the generations following are not as capable or not as moral or whatever, and bemoan the loss of critical attributes and values which portend the imminent breakdown and collapse of civilisation as we know it. Some go so far as to perceive that moral decay is so bad that we are currently living in the ‘end times’. The facts are perhaps not quite as portrayed. The differences between our current society and those of our parents may be opportunity and information. We are now more mobile across space and therefore are exposed to more and different behaviours and attitudes within different cultures. In his book The Idea of Justice Amartya Sen, the Nobel prize winning economist and philosopher, advocates for what he terms an ‘open impartiality’ that seeks to confront the limitations of partiality towards the shared prejudices or biases of a particular group or society. We are witnessing now examples of those prejudices in places as disparate as France, England, Nigeria and Kenya and the problems and conflict which arise when certain groups seek to impose their parochial ideas of dress, behaviour in public, and religious observance on the rest of society, often in the name of God.
In today’s world information is also much more accessible. So that what may have been successfully hidden in the dark in the old time days now very quickly comes to light through social media, the internet and the press. Teenage pregnancy, incest, paedophile priests, child pornography and the use of drugs among sportsmen certainly did not appear only recently. They were around in earlier times and they may seem to be more prevalent now simply because much more of it is exposed.
The second preliminary point is that the empirical evidence of moral decline will only be discerned in overt behaviours, that is how people dress, how they speak, what they do, and in the attitudes they embrace in respect of these behaviours. But even here we need to be careful in our interpretation. A previous Caribbean generation was very homophobic especially, if I may say so, in Jamaica. Today we are more accepting of homosexuality and we validate and affirm the essential humanity of persons who are homosexual in their sexual orientation. I think most people are of the view that that attitudinal change is positive. Some argue that the moral line is crossed is where homosexuality becomes some sort of ‘lifestyle’ choice, like deciding to lose weight or to change one’s hairstyle. Nor should the validation of homosexuals as persons and children of God mean that we should all be subjected to the ‘in your face’ portrayals we now see on television.
My basic point is that we need to be careful in making moral judgments across cultures and over historical time within a particular culture.
The second broad perspective I would like to take in addressing the topic is what we should be examining when we talk of the regeneration of morals and values in Trinidad and Tobago. I do not propose to examine what might be called personal morality. That concerns the perennial debates around prostitution, abortion, contraception, child brides and homosexuality, all of which you will note have to do with sexual activity. Where that is concerned, I would prefer to adopt the attitude of Jesus with the woman caught in adultery and say simply ‘Go and sin no more’. Or the attitude of Pope Francis who in a recent interview, speaking of gays, said:
“A person once asked me, in a provocative manner, if I approved of homosexuality. I replied with another question: ‘Tell me: When God looks at a gay person, does he endorse the existence of this person with love, or reject and condemn this person?’ We must always consider the person.”
He also said: “Religion has the right to express its opinion in the service of the people, but God in creation has set us free: It is not possible to interfere spiritually in the life of a person.”
It is important to appreciate that neither Jesus nor Pope Francis takes a ‘laissez faire, laissez aller’ approach to the matter of personal immorality. What they are both averring is that there is something far more important than regarding and judging that person, and that is recognising his or her essential humanity. We can hate the sin but we must love the sinner.
Public Morality and Ethical Conduct
So since I am not going in that direction, what can be usefully or fruitfully examined in addressing the question of regeneration of morals and values in this society? The approach I have chosen to take is to examine not their personal lives, but the public morality or ethical conduct of our leaders in the society, as evidenced by how they conduct the affairs of the public which have been entrusted to them. I think that this is relevant and perhaps valuable since it is our leaders who set the moral tone in the society. We watch their behaviour in discharging their duties and we determine that if they deem what they are doing is acceptable then why can’t we behave in the same way?
So what kinds of behaviours are we talking about? We are talking about
- The teacher who fails repeatedly to show up for class and neglects to teach the children;
- The government minister who bends the procurement rules to favour a relative or friend;
- The business executive who enriches himself at the expense of his customers;
- The policeman who takes a bribe to look the other way when drugs or illegally quarry material passes through;
- The attorney who pads his invoices to government agencies because he knows that they will not likely be queried.
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You would note from these examples that leadership is not confined to our politicians and parliamentarians. A leader is defined broadly as a person in a position of public trust who is in a position to influence the thoughts and actions of others.
When we reflect on the ethical conduct of our leaders, there is little doubt we are in a bad place as a nation. ‘Morality in public affairs’ was the political war cry in 1956 and it is the political war cry today. But to argue that the moral state of Trinidad and Tobago was just as bad 50 years ago is cold comfort indeed.
The Corruption Perception Index published by Transparency International paints an unflattering picture of the state of corruption in our society. Our global ranking has declined steadily since 2001 from 31 to 80 in 2012; our score fell from 5.3 to 3.2 in 2011.
I have identified five factors which characterise the ethos which seems to me to promote or encourage the corrupt behaviours of our leaders. These are: (1) Remoteness of Consequences (2) Equating Morality with Legality (3) Tu Quoque Argument (4) Unresponsibility and (5) Real or Perceived Unfairness. These are a complex of attitudes and dispositions which reinforce each other and have led us to the situation in which we now find ourselves as a society.
Remoteness of Consequences
It is a well-known principle of behavioural psychology that punishment is more likely to reduce the undesirable behaviour if it immediately follows the behaviour. Where the consequences of the disapproved behaviour are long delayed or do not happen at all, the undesirable behaviour is reinforced. In Trinidad and Tobago, the detection rates for serious crimes are quite low, and the detection rate for white collar crime and corruption is even lower. Moreover, there is yet to be a successful prosecution with penal consequences for any major corruption case in this country.
The problem is even deeper in that miscreants know that the probability of consequences being visited upon them is so low that they can act with impunity. Murderers, unmasked and with CCTV cameras running, kill in broad daylight on our city streets and calmly walk away. Persons arrested for white collar crimes employ high-priced lawyers to escape the consequences of their deeds, cynically using the constitutional right to due process to their advantage in delaying and frustrating successful prosecution. They thumb their noses at the judicial system. We have instances recently of top business executives summoned to appear before the CLICO Commission of Inquiry simply refusing to do so, and Yasin Abu Bakr, the coup leader, doing the same in respect of the 1990 Coup Inquiry.
Equating Morality with Legality
One of the most common attitudes of leaders here is to equate morality with legality. The argument is: if the person has not been convicted in a court of law for a corrupt offence then ipso facto they are not corrupt or cannot be accused of unethical conduct. A recent editorial in the Express commented as follows:
“Ironically, even as he was imputing corrupt acts on the part of Mr Warner, Dr Moonilal in the same breath was denying that any corruption was taking place within the Kamla Persad-Bissessar administration, on the basis that no one had “been arrested, charged, prosecuted for any act of corruption”. This logic, apart from being applicable to Mr Warner himself, does not prevent UNC spokespersons from accusing the PNM of being corrupt, even though no one from that administration has ever been convicted. In any case, legality is not the only issue here. Cronyism may not be unlawful per se, but it is usually unethical and it is always bad governance.” Express Editorial September 18, 2013 (my emphasis).
Every person who is accused of a crime is entitled to the protection of the law and to due process. But the law covers only a specified range of human activity. Much of human activity is not governed by law and rightly so. The law does not usually seek to intrude into people’s bedrooms or interfere too much in contracts freely entered into by more or less equal parties. In order to try to ensure fairness, the law also employs a range of procedural rules e.g. limitation periods, in person testimony by witnesses, quaint rules of evidence. But these procedural rules may themselves be abused and lead to failure of successful prosecution of criminal conduct. The failure to secure a conviction in a court of law does not however, remove the censure which should properly attach to conduct which is unethical.
Tu Quoque Argument
Another argument which is often advanced is the ‘You too’ argument. It suggests that we should accept unethical conduct because others are or were guilty of the same conduct and their transgressions provoked no similar outcry or censure. Quite apart from the fact that the argument is logically fallacious, taken to the extreme, it is actually inviting all of us to be corrupt once the corrupt act attracts no punishment or censure. This is perhaps the most dangerous and insidious argument of all because it accepts and condones unethical conduct.
Unresponsibility
The word ‘unresponsibility’ was coined by Lloyd Best and I have taken it up with relish because it seems to me to describe a particular cultural characteristic of ours, which is the failure to appreciate one’s duty in the circumstances in which one finds oneself. It is more than ignorance or recklessness, because mere ignorance of what is required or mere recklessness leads to irresponsibility. Unresponsibility arises where the person, given their position, should know what is required but they do not, or if they do know what is required, do not know how to go about discharging the particular duty. In an article entitled Our Unresponsible Elite which was published in the Trinidad &Tobago Review some time ago, I pointed to several instances of what I considered to be unresponsibility on the part of our elite, that is those persons who should know better or who should know how to discharge their duty.
One of the examples I adduced in that article is that fact that neither Basdeo Panday nor Patrick Manning as prime ministers following the event saw fit to institute an inquiry into the attempted coup of 1990 which was a most egregious assault on our parliament and our democracy. The issue there was fundamentally what duty required, what was the responsible action to take. Mr Panday in his recent testimony to the Inquiry said in as many words, that he was too busy seeing about growing the economy to institute the inquiry. No doubt Patrick Manning would provide some similar justification for what I consider a dereliction of duty.
I think that part of the reason for the prevalence of unresponsibility in our society is that some people get into positions, where they are expected to know certain things, not by merit and hard work, but by ascription. They are appointed to the position often because of political connections but have no clue how to behave in the office they now hold. The situation has grown worse with the apparent increase in the number of persons who are so anxious for appointment to positions of status and power that they falsify their academic and other credentials in order to be placed.
Real or Perceived Unfairness
Societies are constituted of a set of systems and processes, which are intended to produce efficiency and order, but are also expected to operate fairly. The systems we operate, whether it is to obtain a passport or driver’s licence, to book a seat on an airline, to manage traffic on our roads, must operate in a way that does not confer advantage to one set of persons over the other. Within our culture, system and process clash with privilege and status. It is why so many people have or want flashing blue lights and sirens, why we have not just VIPs but VVIPs, and why we immediately and instinctively reach out to a ‘contact’ in some ministry or department to get what we need.
People who are on the fringe, who are out of the mainstream, know and understand that the systems do not operate fairly where they are concerned. They perceive that the system does not work for them, and that it is inequitable. In the circumstances how then are they to get ahead, to succeed in a society where unfairness seems to be entrenched by one’s class and status, by race and ethnicity and by privilege. What people do then is to cut corners, engage in sharp practices, and even rationalize unethical or criminal behaviour as acceptable. In other words they engage in corruption in order to get around the perceived unfairness of the systems they have to deal with.
These five factors or dispositions create a complex or ethos in our society which I think serves to promote and condone unethical conduct.
What Can We Do To Turn Things Around
I think that in this country we have cultivated an ethos, a complex of values and attitudes which is conducive to unethical conduct. Some have suggested that there is an ethnic dimension to unethical conduct, that is, that some ethnic groups are more prone to unethical conduct than others because their value system is different. I do not agree. I do however think that ethnic competition in our society which is real and growing, exacerbates two of the dispositions identified – Tu Quoque and Perceived Unfairness. The ‘You Too’ argument is easier to make if the ‘you’ is someone from the other ‘tribe’ or ethnic group, since I know that support for me from my ethnic group will be automatic and unthinking. The perception of unfairness in the system or process is heightened where the other tribe or ethnic group controls the system or the process.
So what can be done? First, we have to recognise that the situation will not turn around quickly. It will take years, maybe decades. But we need to start. My own view is that we have to start with the leadership in our society. The conversations about unethical conduct are apparently more frequent now but need to go beyond hurling accusations back and forth about who is more or less corrupt. The conversations need to explore the five factors I have highlighted and focus on how we begin to treat with them. We need to put pressure on persons in positions of leadership by doing what the Express editorial did and expose fallacious thinking and disingenuous positions which support unethical conduct. The ‘We’ here means our parliamentarians, civic organisations, business leaders and our religious organisations, and it means speaking up more and louder than before about the problem.
The second major initiative must be to get our systems and processes to work fairly and transparently. There must be a strong effort to make the delivery of public services efficient so that people come to trust the systems and believe that no one obtains an unfair advantage. We must take strong action against those apparently minor infractions such as driving on the shoulder of the road or breaking the red light to get an unfair advantage, and the enforcement must be fairly done, not one rule for the Mercedes Benz and another for the Sentras. Our judicial system needs to improve the speed with which it deals with matters generally and perhaps put matters involving corruption on a special track within the system so that justice is done quickly and the punishment is exemplary. The consequences of wrongdoing must be proximate to the offence and punishment must be well publicised to act as a deterrent and to name and shame those who have been convicted.
Ultimately, we have to build character. Character is itself a disposition, a set of values that are deeply embedded and which find expression in the person of character asking in any situation ‘What is the right thing to do’ and being able to find the answer as to the right course in a set of values that have been properly formed. Easier said than done, it is true. But for Christians, we have the perfect model to emulate, and that means exposure and re-exposure to the values of the Gospel. And if Catholics and Christians live those values, articulate them and defend them, encourage others to emulate them, who says that we cannot promote a just and ethical civilisation of love in this country!
