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For the second time in a row, we're going to the polls with the Bermuda Housing Corporation scandal lurking over us.

Should it change the way we vote?

There's a lot of persuasive evidence that cabinet ministers acted unethically and in their own self-interest. In which case we should save our country and throw them out.

At the same time (as our cabinet ministers love to point out) none of them have been charged or convicted of anything. In which case, maybe we should give these guys the benefit of the doubt.

Government honesty is so important - the whole government, and eventually the whole country, unravels if you do not have it - that we have to take it seriously.

Unfortunately, neither the government, nor its critics, nor the media, nor the police, nor the prosecutors, have given us as much help as we'd like.

The newspapers have described a long list of questionable activities, Auditor General's reports have catalogued an alarming series of irregularities, and a prosecutor and a police commissioner have described "unethical" behaviour and "inadequate" laws against corruption.

Police investigators have described a painful list of allegations involving the Premier and other high-ranking officials, ranging from using their positions for personal profit to stealing cedar beams.

But there have been no prosecutions, so the evidence hasn't been tested in a court of law. And many of those accused of wrongdoing - most notably the Premier - have refused to give any detailed response to the accusations. There is no easy way to know, exactly and for sure, who did what in the self-serving, money-grubbing that surrounded the Bermuda Housing

Corporation.

How does that help you?

So how does that help the voter - who wants to be fair, but wants good and honest government too?

The answer, I think, is to look beyond individual guilt or innocence, and look instead at the collective responsibility of the Cabinet to deal with the scandal.

Because it was the Government's job to get to the bottom of the problem, real or perceived, no matter who was guilty or innocent.

It was Government's job to restore confidence in Government honesty and in Government's ability to manage the affairs of the people. It was Government's job to ensure that systems were in place to discover corrupt actions by politicians and other public servants, and that the laws were in place to prosecute them. The Government owed that to the country, not so much for the past but for the future.

And here this Government clearly failed us.

It has done nothing to fix what was broken.

There has been no apology, no reprimand, no dismissal, not even a resignation. There have been no law changes. There have been no policy changes, at least none that were publicly announced.

Some BHC employees were replaced, but nothing has been done to restore confidence in the elected officials against whom so many accusations have been made.

No code of conduct has been introduced, and no new rules introduced on conflict of interest or other ethical breaches.

There has been no re-writing of Government contract procedures, and nothing has been done to make a secretive system of Government more open.

The office of the only independent watchdog, the Auditor General, has been weakened, raided by police, and the Auditor General has been arrested with no charges filed. (Although the police are supposed to act independently, the Government has been publicly cheering them on.)

The media has been subjected to libel suits, and to legal efforts to silence them that have been incredibly expensive and paid for by the taxpayer.

Yet calls for any independent investigation into events surrounding the BHC scandal - which could establish the true facts and make recommendations for the future - have been vigorously rejected by the Government.

The net result is that Bermuda, which should have emerged stronger from the BHC scandal, has emerged weaker.

For this, the blame is clear: The responsibility lay with the Government, and it has let us down.[[In-content Ad]]

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