Food for Thought: Curbing Dangerous Trends

-- Dr. Nilda Arduin

Creating a smoke screen around alleged wrongdoings of persons in the community has become an unfortunate and dangerous trend. While it is often said that ?where there is smoke there is fire?, screaming fire while there is no fire may constitute a prosecutable act.

We have a civic duty to keep watch on what?s going on in our society, but it is by no means acceptable to scream fire when we see smoke, without verifying the source of the smoke in order to determine whether there is indeed a fire, or not. Once accused of wrongdoings in the ?Courts of Public Opinion? often renders a not-guilty verdict in the Court of Law rather insignificant, as the scent of smoke is hard to erase when one has been publicly accused.

Corruption should never be covered up, however, repeatedly screaming fire publicly without having investigated, or established the source of the alleged smoke, (eventually) sheds a negative light on our community. Just as the investigation of the source of a fire is a matter to be handled by the Fire Department, investigating corruption is a matter for the Public Prosecutor?s Office.

Screams of unfair treatment, foul play, or undue interference in our local affairs when third parties pick up on those screams, and classify us as a corrupt people, become hollow, when we have been in the lead in creating these negative images ourselves. Besides, apart from this, there is another saying: ?what goes around, comes around?.

We therefore have to be prudent when we speak, in particular making public accusation about persons. The proper route to address issues of corruption in a democratic society is by filing an official complaint with the Public Prosecutor. Not following the procedures provided by our laws, will be undermining our society and its institutions, which we have established ourselves to keep check and balances in the community.

As we are striving to assume more autonomy as a people, revisiting our actions, how we deal with each other, handle our affairs, or create an image of ourselves, and so one, maybe food for thought in the process of constitutional change. Matters regarding our collective consciousness should also have our attention, and need to be addressed. A paper trail will establish the country, but it is the people, who have to build the nation to be!