Herald has been the only English newspaper which broke the story of the removal of the upright Dean Dr Ida de Noronha de Athaide and commented on the first day that this could have been due to the pressure applied by some influential suppliers of equipment, who were applying pressure on the Dean to float lucrative tenders which they would manipulate. (Exhibit 1)
Herald then published a noting of the Chief Minister where he stated that manipulations are carried indeed out in the tender process (Exhibit 2).
In the same story we tracked and proved that one supplier of dental chairs was trying to push an annual maintenance contract for chairs, which the government too wanted to expedite, which the dean resisted because she felt the terms were loaded heavily in favour of the supplier at a loss to the State. Herald relied on documents to state this (Exhibit 3). We then reported that the order to remove her soon followed her report of refusal and stated that the two weren’t related.
We certainly had a big vested interest in following this story. It was for our readers to know more than one side of the story, and not to let a one-sided story come out, so that questions could be asked, in a democratic spirit, on whether her removal was merely due to a rotation policy or were there other reasons. We put out the facts because they are sacred. We left it to our esteemed readers to interpret them because people analyse governments much better than even newspapers do.
