The con­tro­ver­sy over man­age­ment of Caribbean Air­lines (CAL), whose en­tire board was re­placed last month, has not yet had time to fade–but al­ready there is word that the man who helmed that dis­graced board, Ra­bindra Moo­nan, has been ap­point­ed chair­man of an­oth­er ma­jor state en­ter­prise, the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC).It is hard to ig­nore the jobs-for-the-boys stench that hangs over this mat­ter.Just last month, as he re­voked the ap­point­ments of Mr Moo­nan and the oth­er di­rec­tors of the cash-strapped state-owned car­ri­er, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai was crit­i­cal of the laps­es of cor­po­rate gov­er­nance com­mit­ted dur­ing their 11-month tenure.The mat­ter that led to the oust­ing of Mr Moo­nan and the oth­er di­rec­tors was hard­ly a mi­nor in­frac­tion.

CAL's deputy chair­man Mo­han Jaikaran had re­quest­ed 19 com­pli­men­ta­ry air­line tick­ets for Moth­er's Day con­certs he was stag­ing in New York and Toron­to last month. It was al­so re­vealed that, from time to time, di­rec­tives had come down from board mem­bers to up­grade cer­tain pas­sen­gers on the loss-mak­ing air­line from econ­o­my to first class. Mr Howai, in an­nounc­ing the re­place­ment of the Moo­nan-led board, al­so raised con­cerns about a com­pa­ny owned by a CAL di­rec­tor do­ing busi­ness with the state-owned car­ri­er.And this was hap­pen­ing even as the fi­nan­cial­ly-trou­bled air­line was ask­ing the Gov­ern­ment for hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in fund­ing af­ter suf­fer­ing an unau­dit­ed loss of US$52 mil­lion in 2011.These de­vel­op­ments–along with oth­er is­sues that had been plagu­ing the air­line un­der Moo­nan's watch–do not sug­gest, even by the longest stretch of the imag­i­na­tion, that Mr Moo­nan has the ca­pa­bil­i­ties to suc­cess­ful­ly pre­side over a state board, far less one as im­por­tant as the HDC with its huge man­date of pro­vid­ing af­ford­able hous­ing to low- and mid­dle-in­come fam­i­lies.

From the very be­gin­ning, Mr Moo­nan's tenure at CAL had been marked by con­tro­ver­sy. Ear­ly on there had been ques­tions about his ex­pe­ri­ence and qual­i­fi­ca­tions to take up such an im­por­tant ap­point­ment.It didn't help that with­in weeks of be­ing made chair­man of the air­line he was fac­ing harsh crit­i­cisms over the leas­ing of an ex­pen­sive SUV–a fa­cil­i­ty that had not been en­joyed by his pre­de­ces­sors.The pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of a board of di­rec­tors is to pro­tect share­hold­ers' as­sets and en­sure they re­ceive a de­cent re­turn on their in­vest­ment. Di­rec­tors do this by en­sur­ing there is ef­fec­tive or­gan­i­sa­tion­al plan­ning, re­sources are man­aged ef­fec­tive­ly and the en­ti­ty's prod­ucts, ser­vices and pro­grammes are prop­er­ly mon­i­tored. In state-owned en­ti­ties like CAL and the HDC, di­rec­tors must be ac­count­able to tax­pay­ers and not just the po­lit­i­cal ad­min­is­tra­tions that ap­point them.

How­ev­er, these cru­cial con­sid­er­a­tions ap­pear to have been dis­re­gard­ed by the gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials who are in­tent on re­ward­ing Mr Moo­nan–who has act­ed as a tem­po­rary gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor in the past–with an­oth­er plum state di­rec­tor­ship.From his CAL tenure, there is no ba­sis for the con­fi­dence be­ing ex­pressed in Mr Moo­nan by way of this new ap­point­ment to suc­cess­ful­ly man­age the for­tunes of an im­por­tant agency like the HDC. This de­ci­sion must be ex­plained and re-ad­dressed.