FCO letter investigation should be made public

Now that Governor Boyd McCleary has announced an investigation into a recently leaked letter

, the investigation process should be thorough and speedy, and the results should be made public as soon as possible.

The question of what happened to the Nov. 11 letter — which the Foreign and Commonwealth Office attempted to send to Premier Ralph O’Neal — is clearly a matter of public interest. The correspondence warns Mr. O’Neal, who is the finance minister, that the Biwater contract represents a contingent liability for the Virgin Islands government.

The premier’s claim that he never received the letter — which would mean he wouldn’t have been able to consider its contents before the budget passed last year — is a serious matter indeed.

The investigation, then, should seek to answer at least two questions:

• What originally happened to the letter? The premier’s permanent secretary, Rosalie Adams, said she received it and followed protocol, e-mailing it to the BVI London Office because Mr. O’Neal was in London at the time, and delivering a copy to then-acting Premier Dancia Penn.

• How was the letter leaked to the public? Correspondence from the FCO to the premier should not have reached the streets — although in this case the public seems to have learned important information from the leak that otherwise may have been withheld.

Meanwhile, the premier, who called for the investigation, should explain candidly why he refused to answer Opposition Leader Dr. Orlando Smith’s query about the letter during a Feb. 17 House of Assembly meeting.

At the time, Dr. Smith directly asked Mr. O’Neal if he had received a letter from the FCO indicating that the Biwater contract represents a contingent liability. The premier refused to answer. But, if he had never received the letter as he now claims, why didn’t he say so then?

The territory needs answers to such questions. Unfortunately, the results of some past inquiries have been withheld from the public, even though they were funded by tax dollars and involved.

Most recently, the stamp duty inquiry report was withheld by the House of Assembly last August. At the time, the premier said he opposed the report’s release because then-Governor David Pearey had redacted two appendices. But this reasoning seemed illogical at best. And, since then, the public has received no further information about the report, which cost taxpayers at least $300,000. Was that money wasted, then?

The governor’s decision to investigate the FCO letter also begs another question: What has he decided to do about earlier requests for an inquiry into the government’s dealings with Biwater? These requests came in September from at least two sources: the opposition and a group calling itself the “Talk Show Hosts’ Alliance,” which claimed to have presented the governor with a petition with 500 signatures.

Since then, Mr. McCleary has not announced a decision on the requests. Now, it is past time for him to update the public. If he can’t say whether he plans an inquiry, he should at least give a timeline on when he hopes to reach a decision, and explain why he has delayed.

The Biwater matter, which unfortunately has divided this territory, is not going away any time soon.