WHAT a pity that government has consistently given the impression over the past 10 months or so that it has had to be pushed, kicking and screaming, towards a satisfactory resolution of the arms procurement probe.

Starting with the exclusion of the special investigating unit from the investigation, to the alienation of MPs of talent and integrity and the near destruction of the public accounts committee, to protecting Tony Yengeni from legitimate inquiries by the parliamentary ethics committee, it has been a public relations and operational disaster.

It need not have been. Handled better, Yengeni's arrest this week could have served unquestioningly as powerful signal of a commitment to clean government though he must be assumed innocent unless and until proved otherwise.

As it is, the train of events means that many feel constrained to express the hope that Yengeni and perhaps one or two others will not be used merely as sacrificial lambs, while more central players and issues escape thorough investigation.

It is probably best to suspend judgment on this for now, and hope for the best. The last thing the country needs is a saga where new leaks about alleged misconduct related to the package keep on emerging over the next five to 10 years. The only certainty is that this will be the consequence of any attempt at a cover-up.

One reason for unease regarding the events of the past two days has been the urgency with which the justice department whose standing here is unclear has sought to assure the public that Yengeni had no influence over the final outcome of the procurement package.

That may well be so. But it sounds as if the top priority here is to protect the package's integrity, with the imperatives of justice taking only second place. We would like to assume that that question would be answered only after careful judicial scrutiny of the work of Yengeni's defence portfolio committee. The court needs to examine whether the committee's assessment of the defence review was at all biased towards products whose supply Daimler-Benz Aerospace SA the supplier of Yengeni's discounted motor car planned to tender for.

Questions of corruption around the package are, unfortunately, only one aspect of the problem. The other has to do with the package's affordability.

Finance Minister Trevor Manuel last week, in answer to a question from the Democratic Party MP Raenette Taljaard, said the anticipated cost, including finance charges, was now well over R60bn about 50% more than the previously disclosed figure. And that was before the latest devaluation of the rand which will raise the cost by billions more.

We would hope that an appropriately appointed cabinet committee has already begun the work of assessing the options available for downscaling the size of the package.

The questions that need to be looked at include examining which "optional" parts of the package can be jettisoned without doing serious damage to the country's defence needs, and which contracts can be reversed or products exchanged, say, by changing the order from guns (or submarines) to butter, or anti-retroviral drugs.  

With acknowledgement to Business Day.