ONE fundamental aspect of the Westminster system (under which we pretend to operate) is an assumption that the political men and women who are integral parts of it will, in the public domain, conduct themselves as if they are without vices. And, it must also appear that their attributes, authorised as they are to watch the public purse, must stand up to every test of authenticity.

For this reason, if a particular human failing should ever be determined or it is suspected or revealed that such a politician had breached his or her sacred trust involving public duties, the first response should be public penance, and that should lead to some withdrawal from the process.

In other words, such a system assumes that those who occupy it are fully developed social, civil and responsible human beings. It assumes that such ‘honourable’ individuals would embrace themselves with so much shame and remorse should they be thought of as dishonest and deliberately secretive in their public duties that they would immediately volunteer to divest themselves of their public duties and resign.

When political men whose behaviour and relationships betray an acute and tragic misunderstanding of their roles in the public interest and whose culture would better place them in a gallery of the loose, the loud and those skilled in street hustling occupy such a system, it presents them with the perfect opportunity to survive any breaches because, as a collective group, they are all people on a common mission to sell us a six for a nine. In doing so, they spit in our faces with impunity.

The first error made by the North West Clarendon MP and state minister in the works ministry, Richard Azan, was in knowing that he had no power to authorise the building of shops on property belonging to the Clarendon Parish Council, yet went ahead and did just that by way of private arrangement with a contractor. That we know so far.

We do not know if the limited number of wooden shops were rented out only to the PNP faithful, but what we do know is that the monthly rental of $5,000 was paid at the PNP constituency office (not a Government entity) and someone in that office was paid a 10 per cent commission. Up until two Fridays ago, no one knew exactly where the funds were. They didn’t show up in the parish council’s accounts.

But then, as the controversy swirled and it appeared that Mr Azan could not survive, the wagons circled. The funds magically appeared and they were paid over to the parish council. Plus, the ownership of the shops was transferred to the parish council. What route did those funds take?

Shops to Azan’s constituency office? Azan’s constituency office to contractor? Contractor to parish council, with all commissions previously deducted, repaid? How was the ownership transfer done so speedily? When will the contractor be paid for the shops he built, or did he transfer them for a cosmetic one dollar?

And, of course, although the prime minister in her inauguration address had made a promise to the nation to be very tough on corruption, we did in fact expect her to formulate her own version of Mr Azan’s guilt or lack thereof. With even sensible PNP comrades seeing the matter for what it was and calling for Azan to step down, Simpson Miller kept out of sight and, we assume, sanctioned the Cabinet Office to retain Azan, one of her loyalists in the party.

If that was bad enough, the Cabinet office issued a statement which appeared as if it was directed to a nation of abject cretins. The most offensive part: “… Azan’s actions are not directly related to his duties as minister of state in the Ministry of Transport, Works and Housing.”

Only in a nation of F-class citizens could such an insulting explanation be accepted. As I watched Information Minister Sandrea Falconer on TV, I could see the pain etched deep in her face as she struggled to stave off questioning from media hawks.

Even if we should accept that Mr Azan’s left hand does his work as member of parliament and his right hand conducts business as junior minister in the transport, works and housing ministry, are we to reasonably assume that the right hand didn’t know what the left hand was doing?

If our citizens are just plain dunce or made apathetic by the crippling economy, what are we to make of the type of politicians who would formulate such a blatantly offensive and disrespectful press release covering the Cabinet’s pathetic saving of Mr Azan’s bacon?

It has been reported, and not been denied, that the contractor who built the shops was also in charge of constructing Mr Azan’s fine, multimillion-dollar house on a rise some distance away from the bustle of the Spaldings market and shops. That, of course, indicates, at the very least that even if Mr Azan’s back was against the wall and he was forced to hurriedly conjure up a story, he still could not claim that he did not know the contractor.

After all, it was he who authorised him to build the shops and in so doing breached at least two rules. One, he had no such authority, and two, any action after that would just be plainly wrong.

Even if Mr Azan was rigidly two-sided and, in his MP dispensation, wanted to assist a few constituents, if he ‘authorised’ the construction using private funds, how did those private funds become involved in an encroachment on government lands without recourse to the established, if not lengthy, process?

To say that the state minister was acting in his ‘other self’ capacity — that of member of parliament — is to deny the fact that it was that very MP status which gave him his ministerial status. So why conveniently separate both posts?

To save Mr Azan’s bacon, in every sense

When the embattled state minister decided that he could no longer hide from the press he issued a tepid and seemingly well-vetted release, a part of which stated, “I had no intention to act in a corrupt manner and at no time did I derive any personal benefit.”

Mr Azan is either as befuddled as his political bosses or, they have all signed off on a sinister plan of action to cement him in his post. They just don’t get it.

We don’t give a damn about Mr Azan’s intentions!

Maybe he intends to go to heaven or to climb Mount Everest or whip Usain Bolt at the next Olympics. It is his actions we are concerned with. I am certain he would like us to believe that his intentions were pure and noble. But the handling of the matter so far indicates that the prime minister’s tough talk made 15 months ago was empty and scripted specifically for a nation of simpletons.