Dear Sir,

I suspect many people will feel encouraged by the announcement of the Commission of Inquiry to investigate the years highlighted by the Auditor-General’s report. However, on balance in my view, the country is a bit cheated when we only have three years of what may be the wildest period of PLP spending and the Walton Brown bill, which spans many years, which the Governor stalled for lack of clarity, remains on the shelf.

At hand is public interest and transparency, hopefully leading to a sense of fairness and accountability. None of us needs to rush to judgment before the facts are clearly known. Lay people and professionals from diverse backgrounds have wondered by what hand has such public stench been allowed to evade seemingly every vestige of power and control, reaching almost to high heaven.

Fair is fair and there can be only one justice that is true and it is justice for all. Selective justice is no more than politics. When it comes to the public good, let’s go all the way.

I don’t want to see the hands of those continuously profiting, who directly participated in any way, in an exercise knowingly benefiting, particularly at the expense of the public, who for the most part were suffering. Additionally, I can’t close my eyes to clear fraudulent and systemic abuse by powerful institutions and professionals who stole the wealth of many families and I am not just talking about Tucker’s Town.

The Tucker’s Town issue, which is fairly documented, will always remain an ethically contested issue, but whose morality can never reach a virtue because the stolen legacy of Captain John Smith’s descendants, can never be quenched with money. There are many cases around Bermuda where families are too poor to seek justice and the only hope of even a token reparation for losses, would come from a tribunal afforded by a commissioned inquiry. I thought Walton Brown was sincere with his bill that passed in the House of Assembly amid an uproar and commotion occasioned by Suzann Roberts-Holshouser, the One Bermuda Alliance MP who made a conscientious stand against her own party line.

I ask, to what avail was all the effort and tantrum?

Was the matter left as just a narrow publicity victory, where the OBA and the Governor get painted with no legislative follow-up? Why has there not been a follow-up to satisfy the written criterion of the Governor’s response to the act, to show the areas of claims, not necessarily the specifics, and perhaps generally a trail of how the recompense is to be met? I am waiting.

KHALID WASI