26 August 1998, 963 words
As an architect, you would think Housing Minister John Humphrey would be more aware than the average person about the dangers of pelting big stone in a glass house.
Yet, speaking at the opening of an asphalt plant on some weeks ago, Minister Humphrey called upon the media to be "honest and truthful", without giving any specific examples of media lies. "I just ask them to be honest and truthful," he said, adding, like the actress to the bishop, "That shouldn't be too hard."
But what really is truth, except strange to US President Bill Clinton? The philosopher John Locke held that the unerring mark of love of truth was "not entertaining any proposition with greater assurance than the proofs it is built upon will warrant." Clinton, possibly not having read Locke, entertained Monica Lewinsky's propositions without getting her assurance that she would wash her dress free of the proof afterwards.
But Clinton is still a Diogenes compared to most Trinidadian politicians. Mr. Humphrey himself seems to find being "honest and truthful" rather difficult. Consider, for example, his recent assertion that the editors of the Expressand the Guardian are in a conspiracy with one another and the PNM. Now if Locke is right, Mr. Humphrey, who was then Acting Prime Minister, presumably has clear proof to back up his conviction. On the other hand, since he takes his Acting-like-Basdeo-Panday role so seriously, maybe not.
Perhaps it is that Mr. Humphrey prefers the American philosopher and pedagogue John Dewey, who defined truth as "warranted assertability", meaning that a belief was true by its effects. In other words, if newspaper reports like the illegal Chinese workers, the NFM scandal, the illegality of the Airport expansion project and so on all cause the UNC to lose the next general election, then Mr. Humphrey's belief that the media are opposed to the Government will have been "proven" true. On the other hand, if the UNC wins the next election, he will be a liar. So the real question is: does Mr. Humphrey prefer to be a truthful Opposition MP or a lying Government Minister?
Well, the old aphorism says that "birds of a feather flock together" (which is how you get baby birds.) Mr. Humphrey is apparently quite comfortable to sit in a Cabinet where several members, including his leader Prime Minister Basdeo Panday, have often been caught in lies, half-truths and innuendoes.When, for example, Agriculture Minister Reeza Mohammed lied to Parliament about the Susan Harrysingh appointment, Mr. Humphrey seemed quite blasé about the truth then.
And when Finance Minister Brian Kuei Tung "misled" Cabinet about Maritime so his old company could pick up the Winsure portfolio and the multi-million dollar Government payout that accompanied it, Mr. Humphrey made absolutely no public comment about the virtues of truthfulness.
Or what about the time Mr. Humphrey's political leader, Prime Minister Panday, said he had received no report about a death threat to Ken Gordon after the latter criticized the Green Paper for Media Reform? Mr. Panday was contradicted by now-former Police Commissioner Noor Mohammed (which may be one reason he is now-former.) Mr. Humphrey didn't seem worried about anyone's commitment to the truth then. And how about the time Mr. Panday said that the Julian Rogers issue never came up with Barbadian Prime Minister Owen Arthur, only to be contradicted by Mr. Arthur himself, after which Mr. Panday belatedly admitted that the issue had been mentioned? Mr. Humphrey at that time remained completely undisturbed about the importance of truth.
Which brings us to Mr. Humphrey's own record. Some months ago, again when he was Acting Prime Minister, he declared that the media was planning to overthrow the Government. Not, mark you, "being too critical" or "wanting to ensure the UNC lost the next election". The word Mr. Humphrey used was "overthrow", with all its implications of guns and coups and violence. Hopefully, though, when Keith Smith, Tony Fraser, Dale Enoch and others of that ilk invade Parliament waving loaded cameras and sharpened pencils, Mr. Humphrey will give free advice about their amnesty and later call upon the nation to forgive them.
After all, what is the Jamaat-al-Muslimeen compared to the drug dealers and the media, Mr. Humphrey recently describing the latter groups as "the two most destructive forces in the country". Is Mr. Humphrey's description the whole truth, or half of the truth, or an outright lie? It can be a whole truth only if the media is as addictive as cocaine. Yet, although I myself have some very enthusiastic readers, I doubt that they go around all jittery and hollow-eyed until they get their Independent. Nor have I noticed any increase in vagrants because TTT has been repeating Xena episodes for the past few months.
Besides the matter of addiction, the media can be compared to drug dealers only if journalists go around killing people who offend them. But Keith Smith had threatened only to sue Anil Mahabir, not to sit on him. On the other hand, Mr. Panday did assert that the media had killed Princess Di and, like I said, Mr. Humphrey apparently takes his role as Acting Prime Minister Basdeo Panday very literally. (Not that I blame Mr. Humphrey for doing so. If you don't have confidence in your own thinking, you might as well adopt somebody else's.)
The philosopher and mathematician Bertrand Russell held that "Truth is to be defined by some relation to fact, but exactly what this relation is to be must depend upon the character of the truth involved." Given the character of Mr. Humphrey as revealed by his public statements, the definition becomes quite simple: Mr. Humphrey's relation with the truth is entirely dysfunctional. And that's a fact.
Copyright ©1998 Kevin Baldeosingh