Forte "Should Resign," Colleagues Say

Senate Rotunda, Coruscant — Following its reporting this week on the extravagant travel expenses of Senator Johannes Oswaldt (Eriadu) and Senator Borert Harbright (Ruan) and the decision of the Senate Corruption Panel not to investigate, The Coruscant Journal has been approached by members of the Panel who place the blame on its chairman, Senator Cul'utaan Forte (Ryloth). Mr. Forte, according to one member of the panel, is "enabling corruption."

This is not the first time that the Corruption Panel has come under scrutiny during Senator Forte's chairmanship. Mr. Forte recently announced investigations into Senator Jamulon Tiure (Dantooine) and Senator Lomen Ryuun (Druckenwell) for alleged misconduct. However, the Panel did not follow through on these investigations and both cases were later dropped. Senator Ryuun has filed a lawsuit against Mr. Forte and the Corruption Panel for defamation. Mr. Forte himself was also fined 100,000 credits by his own Panel earlier this year for procuring classified information.

Since that time, the Panel has conducted no hearings or investigations. Senator E'noro (Clak'dor IV), a member of the Corruption Panel, told The Coruscant Journal that Mr. Forte has missed many of the Panel's meetings, and that recommendations to his office—such as a recommendation, last month, to investigate the travel expenses of Senator Oswaldt, which would require Mr. Forte's signature—have gone unanswered. "I'm not saying that Cul'utaan is corrupt," Mr. E'noro said, "but he is enabling corruption."

Mr. E'noro added that the Corruption Panel intended, this week, to endorse a letter to Chief of State Ponc Gavrisom calling on him to demand Mr. Forte's resignation as chairman. Mr. Forte was unavailable for comment, but his office told The Coruscant Journal that "the Senator regrets his absense from the Corruption Panel proceedings of late," and that he has been preoccupied with domestic events on Ryloth. "All the more reason for him to resign," Mr. E'noro said.

Cul'utaan Forte has represented Ryloth in the New Republic Senate for a decade. He was a Separatist General in the Clone Wars and, later, marshaled his remaining forces to fight the Empire. He was a respected figure in the Rebellion, and was briefly the Senator of New Plympto before being elected to represent his ancestral homeworld instead. He sits on several councils and committees, and is a former chairman of the influential Defense Council. In addition to the Senate Corruption Panel, he also currently chairs the Committee on Monument Preservation and Promotion (known informally as the "monuments committee"). Here, too, he has been a controversial figure, having been censured by the Senate earlier this year for "lack of action" and "contempt for his office."

"Senator Forte, it seems, regularly misses the committee's meetings and leaves its members to labor without guidance," Senator Sir Reuke Cambrist (Brentaal) said during the debate over Mr. Forte's censure, "When he is presiding, I'm told, he appears bored and, in at least one reputed case, has fallen asleep during the committee's discussions! It also seems as though the Senator has, of late, taken spontaneous and unannounced 'leaves of absense,' during which he is incommunicado both with his colleagues and his constituents."

Despite his censure, however, a recent inquiry to Mr. Forte from Chief of State Gavrisom on the progress of the monuments committee went unanswered, and members of that committee, too, tell The Coruscant Journal that Mr. Forte continues to be inattentive to their work. "He considered the censure politically motivated," an anonymous, frustrated member of the committee lamented, "He hasn't learned anything from it."

It was also not the first time that Mr. Forte had been censured by the Senate—he was admonished once before for having "insulted and slandered the name and reputation of certain Senators" nine years ago. "Therefore," the motion read, "the Senate reprimands Senator Forte for conduct unbecoming of a Senator... and warns him to refrain from such conduct henceforth or be subject to suspension, revocation of his chairmanship, or both." A recent law on Eriadu also referred to Mr. Forte as "a being of poor character and repute," who "has shown contempt for and uttered aspersions upon the form of government of the New Republic."

Controversy has followed Mr. Forte throughout his career, but whether this latest scandal over his leadership of the Corruption Panel will oust him as chairman of that Panel or of the monuments committee, remains to be seen. The Coruscant Journal will follow the story as it develops.