Can somebody tell us what has changed between May 18 when Government Senator Mr Tom Tavares-Finson withdrew from the record as Mr Christopher ‘Dudus’ Coke’s attorney and Wednesday, or thereabouts, when he got back on?

If our records serve us correctly, Mr Tavares-Finson told this newspaper on May 18 that he was “…setting up a team and stepping aside as the matter moves to court in order to avoid conflict of interest”.

Yet according to yesterday’s edition, there he was back in court, acting on the behalf of Mr Coke who, having waived his right to an extradition hearing here, is expected to answer drug- and gun-running charges in the United States any day now. The day before Mr Tavares-Finson was cheerfully telling the Press that Mr Coke was “in good spirits and looking forward to tomorrow’s (yesterday’s) hearing”.

Is it that Mr Tavares-Finson forgot what he said last month, or is his brazen behaviour being motivated by other factors?

We would have thought, given his administration’s less-than-squeaky clean image, he would have opted to stay as far away as possible from the hovering ghosts of conflict and compromise.

But maybe, given much of what we have witnessed since last year when the Government went public with its horribly inappropriate affair with Mr Coke, we are being naive and unrealistic.

Naïve to believe the words of a senator who is still on the record as endorsing one of the nastiest scandals in the country’s history; unrealistic to expect better.

Yet we must, expectations aside, demand better behaviour from those who insist on occupying positions of leadership in this country.

Even if barefacedness is the new way forward, we can’t sit silently by and say nothing when our leaders begin to make fools of us and themselves.

And as long as he occupies a position in the Senate, chairing its Regulations Committee and sitting on its Privileges Committee, Mr Tavares-Finson is, for all intents and purposes, a leader.

His colleague senators, none of whom have seen fit — to date — to withdraw last month’s endorsement of the position which Prime Minister Bruce Golding has abandoned, are leaders.

Their positions are inextricably linked to our welfare as they have the power to influence the laws which govern us.

Any failure on our part to hold them accountable to their words and actions cannot be in the public interest.

For it is crystal clear that if the Press had not facilitated the sustained pressure that the right-minded people in this society have been putting on our leaders since last year, we wouldn’t be where we are now.

Backsliding is not an option for us now.

Nor should it be for Senator Tavares-Finson.