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TIME and TIME again I want to give this Government the benefit of the doubt, but time and again they blow it.

For example, I really do want to believe that the Government is doing the best it can for its citizens by building a new courthouse and police station on Court Street.

If the building's a few months behind schedule, I'm not going to get worked up: I can't remember when it was supposed to be ready anyway.

And if the Canadian contracting partner drops out of the picture for some reason, I won't get bent out of shape: There's bound to be a logical reason and the Minister of Works & Engineering would be happy to explain.

But then The Royal Gazette reports something that's already perfectly obvious to everybody in the construction industry - that the building's behind schedule, and the Canadian contracting partners have left the job with a substantial cash settlement.

And the Government's first instinct is to deny these truths and attack the newspaper.

Instead of explaining what's going on, Works Minister Derrick Burgess declared the newspaper's story was "false in almost every material respect".

It quickly became clear that the story was, in fact, completely true in almost every material respect.

Among other indications was the fact that the department's top civil servant took reporters on a tour of the site, and in the process acknowledged just about everything the Gazette's story had stated.

So why on earth would Mr. Burgess have said what he said?

It was strange and unhealthy behaviour for anyone in Government.

We depend on Government to tell the truth, to level with us completely. The relationship between Government and the people needs to be built on trust, and without it, society simply doesn't function properly.

Of course, part of the problem is that many Government Ministers hold the media in such complete contempt that they probably don't care what they tell it.

They make the mistake, when faced with a bespectacled dufus holding a notebook or a microphone, of seeing some kind of malevolent enemy.

What they should be seeing - what their duty and obligation IS to see - is the voting public who will end up reading those newspapers, listening to the radio and watching the news on TV.

And that public needs to be told the truth - always - no matter what wars the Minister might be waging or grudges he might be carrying.

Suspicion's like a virus

Let me give you a very concrete and immediate example of how the damage caused by this kind of deception expands quickly, and how the suspicion it causes spreads like a virus.

Last week, the Mid-Ocean News reported that the beneficiaries of a trust involved in the construction "reads like a who's who of Cabinet Ministers and their relatives."

This is something the construction company, LLC Bermuda Ltd., vehemently denied in a press release issued Wednesday.

But after the Works Minister had so adamantly denied a true story on the same building project, you are not inclined to give the Cabinet Ministers the benefit of the doubt any more.

And you won't give a lot of credence to anything any other Government Minister has to say on the subject either.

You certainly won't pay much attention to the Premier when he comments on the situation by declaring: "This is a ridiculous plantation question and will not be answered."

Maybe the question is ridiculous. The only thing I know for sure is that I cannot trust the answers.

Some time back, when he first fell into the habit of dismissing unwanted inquiries as "plantation questions", the Premier was good enough to explain what he meant.

"A plantation question is for me a question which conjures up images of the plantation, of a master-servant relationship, a man-boy relationship. A question that would be asked of a black politician and not a white one."

Any reporter worth his salt, if hearing that a government project might be enriching Cabinet Ministers and their families, would ask the question.

And any leader worth his salt would answer, openly and truthfully.[[In-content Ad]]

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