IT was an angry prime minister who spoke on Wednesday in parliament. She had reasons to be angry. The World Bank's (WB) cancellation has not only thrown into uncertainty the project that would have given her tremendous mileage in the next election but the action has also brought her government into disrepute both within the country and abroad.

As we have argued earlier, this debacle was easily avoidable. Not taking the WB's findings seriously was a serious mistake. Even if they were found to be unsubstantial, the government could have cleared all obstacles that lay in the path of implementing the project and through its own genuine investigation could have cleared the name of the said minister and others and reinstated them with honour later, even during the lifetime of the project itself. That way the WB could have been made to eat its own words. But we opted to brush aside the WB's allegations from the word go, and when we did decide to respond we did so inadequately and never touching the minister who was allegedly at the centre of it all.

For us to suddenly discover how corrupt the WB is does not serve any purpose. Why haven't we done so before? If we have evidence of the bank's corruption we should place it before its governing bodies. As a Member State of the WB we have every right to do so. Let us make one thing clear. If we still think that the WB's decision was based on unjustifiable grounds we can put our “evidence” before it to exonerate ourselves.

The way to move forward is not to react angrily but intelligently. It should be in a manner that will resume the project and restore government's image. We think negotiations can be opened with a completely new approach with people at the helm whose reputation is beyond reproach.