“You can fool some of the people all of the time, and all of the people some of the time, but you cannot fool all of the people all the time.” – Abraham Lincoln

IT is perhaps most significant that the Dudus/Manatt Commission of Enquiry completed the major chunk of its cross-examination on Friday, April 1, 2011, popularly known worldwide as “All Fools’ Day”.

Interestingly, yesterday, Monday, April 4, 2011, the day set aside for the by-election in South-West Catherine, is known in the United States as “Tell A Lie Day” and as the name suggests, this is an opportunity to spend the day with a pack of lies. No doubt, on any election trail, many lies or empty promises will have been made. After all, it is well known and accepted by most Jamaicans that among the people in public life who cannot be trusted are politicians who, as the Native Americans would say, speak with “forked tongues”.

The Dudus/Manatt Commission of Enquiry was established primarily to ferret out the truth. This would presuppose that there are those individuals who have been involved in one way or another who have not adhered to the truth.

Indeed, as learned counsel for the Opposition People’s National Party KD Knight has so aptly put it, “pathologically mendacious”. Mendacity is the propensity to lie and when this tendency becomes pathological this means that the individual so affected has a diseased condition and is therefore in need of psychiatric treatment.

Of course, one of the worst scenarios is when one begins to believe one’s lies. Did this occur during the Commission of Enquiry derisively referred to as “Days of Our Lies”, a “soap opera” or “pantomime”? What is most amazing, if not very disturbing, is that those from whom much was expected by way of the truth turned out to be obfuscatory. The frequent reliance on evasive responses as “I can’t recall” or “I can’t recollect” brought the proceedings of the Commission of Enquiry into disrepute as well as derision.

The potent question being asked by many concerned citizens is, why was it necessary to expend over $78 million dollars in what may well turn out to be an exercise in futility?

The Commission of Enquiry began with a negative drawback: that it was established by the very person, JLP Leader and Prime Minister Bruce Golding who, by his utterances inside and outside of the House of Parliament on the controversial Christopher “Dudus” Coke extradition matter, had caused many Jamaicans to question his credibility and the extent to which he should be trusted by civil society and ultimately the electorate.

The PNP’s lead attorney KD Knight has gone as far as to question whether the commission was akin to a kangaroo court.

In the final analysis, this entire affair boils down to the sacred issue of trust. If a leader cannot be trusted for whatever reason, then it will become increasingly difficult for him to govern his people effectively. And given the fact that most politicians’ careers begin with a trust deficit, it becomes even more untenable when the public is given more than enough reasons to put their confidence and belief in the utterances of an elected representative.

The question may well be asked, why is it that the people in general have found it so difficult to believe Mr Golding when, during the Commission of Enquiry he swore on the Holy Bible to tell the truth, the whole truth and nothing but the truth? It is undoubtedly a classic case of “cock mouth kill cock”. In other words, by his deeds shall man be known.

Should we, for example, believe him when he said (Jamaica’s) constitutional rights do not end at Liguanea and that he was referring to the United States Embassy and not to the socio-economic line of demarcation which for decades has been set at Cross Roads or Half-Way-Tree?

And how can he be trusted when he admitted to knowing that some five of his members of parliament were unconstitutionally elected by virtue of having dual citizenship at the time they were nominated but that he kept this close to his chest in order to preserve his slim majority in Gordon House? To add salt to the wound, the last MP fingered in this constitutional debacle, the irascible and disrespectful Everald Warmington, was given the go-ahead to face the polls on “Tell A Lie Day”.

The bottom line is that if Jamaica is to be rescued from this political and moral morass, then our leaders must begin to develop an affinity for the truth and must desist from fooling (up) the people in their desperate bid to gain or retain power. “Tom drunk but Tom nuh fool.”

lloydbsmith@hotmail.com