It matters not whether the "blasted land" was a "little strip" of an "old main road", as Audley Shaw describes it.

That bit of land belonged to the people of Jamaica. If what Dean Peart claims is the truth is in fact so, Mr Shaw had no right to it. Based on his comments to this newspaper, Mr Shaw is yet to make a convincing case that Mr Peart failed to tell the truth.

Mr Peart was responsible for land in the Patterson administration. As he tells it, Mr Shaw, then the shadow finance minister and a businessman, squatted on a piece of land which became part of a petrol station he then owned.

Mr Shaw counters that he was willing to pay for the quarter-acre plot. But, according to Mr Peart, he ignored ministry officials when they wrote about payment. Mr Shaw, he claims, was even unwilling to negotiate.

Whatever the accuracy of those claims and counterclaims, the land was, in the end, bought by Joe Issa of Cool Oasis after Mr Shaw lost his petrol station.

We have two significant comments on this matter. First, at the material time Mr Shaw was not just any other citizen, for whom squatting on government land and declining to pay would be nonetheless wrong. He was the shadow finance minister, who would have been well aware of the possibility that he might assume the portfolio if, as happened, the government changed.

Even if Mr Peart has applied spin to his interpretation of the events, Mr Shaw should have been cognisant of his need to behave with the utmost probity, especially given his reputation, in which he revelled, for unearthing governmental corruption and sleaze.

In other words, Mr Shaw, given his circumstance and the platform on which his party campaigned, needed to be seen to operate firmly within the letter and spirit of the law. Given his waffle in yesterday's report, he still has a fair bit of explaining to do - with clarity.

But even more important than Mr Shaw's perceived failings is the behaviour of Mr Peart. We are concerned about the timing of his revelation and whether anything would have been said outside of a political contest. Mr Peart, by his own admission, has only talked now because he believes that the new administration is going after Kern Spencer, the former junior minister for energy, who is embroiled in the Cuban light bulb affair.

Mr Spencer has been accused of corruption by the contractor general over procurement contracts. The view is that the Government is attempting to sully him further, hence the disclosure that he (and others) bought government land, without the sale being referred to a land divestment committee. There appears to be no question, however, that Mr Spencer paid.

It is unfortunate that Mr Peart treated this matter as a tit-for-tat affair. Nothing would have been said about Mr Shaw if he did not feel that there was an unfair attempt to "destroy" Mr Spencer. That, we feel, is wrong.

There can no longer be any room for the kind of political cosiness of the past, suggested in Mr Peart's "we are colleagues" remark. Political misbehaviour and abuse of the public trust are what they are - by whomever. When trust is breached and the law is broken there ought to be consequences.