And so after two weeks of suspense – literally, too, just leaving him dangling, not using columns he dutifully supplied, without the common decency of an explanation – the Trinidadian newspaper, Newsday, has sacked Kevin Baldeosingh, easily its best writer and the only semi-public figure to have displayed any integrity in the whole Integrity Commission bullshit affair; and you have to take your hat off to Trinidad; nowhere else would have the gumption to publicly punish someone for doing the right thing.

It was Kevin who exposed the blatant plagiarism of Catholic priest, Henry Charles, who copied at least three columns from others. (I myself sent a letter to all the papers, clearly illustrating the third instance; no paper published it.)

The Express story reports that Kevin approached Newsday, his own paper, with the story first (as I happen to know he did, since he contacted me about it, as well as the Humanist Association, of which he is the president and I, nominally, the PRO). The simple truth is Newsday had the story before anyone else and chose not to run it.

And now, in a plot twist Albert Camus might have rejected for his novella, The Stranger, Kevin, the open atheist, is being punished for revealing the hypocrisy of a priest his own newspaper would have hushed up.

Shame on Newsday, shame on the priest – how he sleeps at night, the Devil alone knows – and shame on Trinidad & Tobago for penalizing the only person in the whole shebang that did the right thing and protecting the scoundrels who let us down.