When Dr. Vin Lawrence, the former executive chairman of the Urban Development Corporation (UDC), appears before Parliament's Public Accounts Committee (PAC), it is our hope that he will help to take us closer to an understanding of the management fiasco that led to multibillion-dollar cost overruns during the construction of the Sandals Whitehouse hotel.

We, however, have great doubts that this will happen, judging from the signal from the PAC's chairman, the shadow finance minister Audley Shaw. For it seems that Mr. Shaw's primary motivation at this point is scoring political points rather than getting to the root of why it cost more than US$40 million (J$2.6 billion) of taxpayers money than originally budgeted to build the hotel.

That, indeed, would be the inescapable conclusion of anyone who saw the television images of Mr. Shaw addressing a rally in Portland of the Opposition Jamaica Labour Party (JLP), at which he reported on the earlier sessions of the PAC's hearing into the Whitehouse issue and appeared to set the tone for future sittings.

It is to be recalled that the Whitehouse project is a joint venture between Gordon 'Butch' Stewart's holding company Gorstew and two government agencies, the UDC and the former National Investment Bank of Jamaica (NIBJ), which is now enveloped into the Development Bank of Jamaica (DBJ).

The UDC was in charge of the construction of the hotel and according to the findings of a group of forensic auditors, made a mess of the project. But while the UDC's management was apparently callous and inept, the audit did not let off the hook the other partners, some of whose associated companies, it was reported, not only benefited from contracts that did not go to tender, but were also less than vigilant in ensuring that rules were followed.

But Dr. Lawrence is a member of the ruling party and was a powerful person in the administration of former Prime Minister P.J. Patterson. The UDC is a government agency. Hurt them and there is hurt to the Government and political advantage to the Opposition.

There is, of course, nothing fundamentally wrong with the Opposition gaining political advantage from an issue of corruption or poor governance, if these are what happened at Whitehouse. What we are concerned about is there seems to be an a priori conclusion that this is so. Therein lies the danger of the facts being shaped to suit the conclusion, rather than a genuine search for truth to ensure that breaches do not occur in the future.

Which is why we take issue with Mr. Shaw's Portland performance. In great animation and jiggling folds, he regaled his audience about the discomfiture of the UDC's President and CEO, Marjorie Campbell, and the supposed inadequacy of her answers when she recently appeared before the PAC to testify about Sandals Whitehouse. Then he warmed to Dr Lawrence's impending appearance: "We go pepper fi him backside, too".

This premeditated plan to 'pepper' Dr Lawrence's backside suggests that Mr. Shaw is far more intent on putting on a show than gathering facts and arriving at the truth. That, we insist, is unbecoming of the PAC chairman, whose position demands that he operates with fairness and balance in a quasi-judicial role befitting the highest forum of the land. He has to be, as he suggested during Greg Christie's appearance, above the most partisan fray.