Good name in man and woman, dear my lord,
Is the immediate jewel of their souls.
Who steals my purse steals trash; ’tis something, nothing;
‘Twas mine, ’tis his, and has been slave to thousands;
But he that filches from me my good name
Robs me of that which not enriches him,
And makes me poor indeed.(From Othello by William Shakespeare)
Last week the Antigua police publicly declared Sir Ron Sanders a “person of interest” in a multimillion-dollar fraud investigation and insinuated that he was on the lam. But I can truly think of nothing more preposterous and irresponsible.
It is preposterous because the police cannot demonstrate that they lifted a finger (to make a simple telephone call, for example) to contact Sir Ron before releasing this defamatory information to the press. And it is irresponsible because they know full well that such a public declaration, devoid as it is of any basis in fact, is tantamount to robbing this eminent man of his good name.
Former Antigua Attorney General Sir Gerald Watt was sufficiently outraged by this gross abuse of legal process that he called on the police to offer Sir Ron a public apology forthwith. I second his call.
I fear however that an apology, no matter how appropriately abject, cannot possibly compensate for the damage this declaration has done to Sir Ron’s reputation.
Of course those of us who know him as a friend and colleague know that he is so far beyond reproach in this respect that it is laughable.
But how, for Christ’s sake, does he explain this incomprehensible declaration by the police to others – like fellow members of the Commonwealth Eminent Persons Group or those of the Inter-America Democratic Charter (a group of even more eminent persons which Sir Ron was invited to join by no less a person than former U.S. President Jimmy Carter)?
No, a simple apology will not do; although, for the sake of this country’s own reputation, the police would do well to heed Sir Gerald’s admonition to apologize without further delay.
But the fact that Sir Ron is a person of such world renown and international esteem suggests that the police might have been acting more in furtherance of a political conspiracy than a criminal investigation.
This is why it behooves Prime Minister Baldwin Spencer himself to order a special investigation – not just to hold to account those responsible for making this preposterous and irresponsible declaration, but also to demonstrate to the world that his government will not tolerate such brazen incompetence and flagrant abuse by his country’s police force.
Alas, for now, something really stinks in the nation of Antigua and Barbuda.