It is of­ten said that jus­tice must not on­ly be done but al­so seen to be done. Equal­ly, for most, per­cep­tion is re­al­i­ty, which is why it is very im­por­tant in pub­lic in­ter­est mat­ters for trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty to be the or­der of the day.

Al­so, those who hold po­si­tions of pub­lic trust have a huge re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to en­sure that both their ut­ter­ances and ac­tions nei­ther dis­suade nor dis­cour­age pub­lic par­tic­i­pa­tion in the very process­es they are cho­sen to fos­ter and which they al­so hail for their in­de­pen­dence.

This is why it is both dis­ap­point­ing and dis­cour­ag­ing to learn of Pan Trin­ba­go pres­i­dent Bev­er­ley Ram­sey-Moore’s bla­tant dis­missal this week of con­cerns raised by mem­bers of the pan fra­ter­ni­ty about the lat­est win by Katzen­jam­mers—the steel­band that she owns—in the medi­um cat­e­go­ry of the Panora­ma fi­nal, which PanTrin­ba­go over­sees. Be­fore sharply dis­miss­ing these con­cerns as “bull,” we be­lieve Mrs Ram­sey-Moore should have paused to con­sid­er the per­spec­tive of those look­ing on at the state-fund­ed or­gan­i­sa­tion. More par­tic­u­lar­ly, her dual roles and the ob­vi­ous per­cep­tion of con­flict of in­ter­est.

Yes, it is ex­pect­ed that the pres­i­dent of Pan Trin­ba­go will emerge from the bo­som of the pan fra­ter­ni­ty and will of ne­ces­si­ty be in­nate­ly con­nect­ed to its mis­sion and man­date. How­ev­er, as long as Mrs Ram­sey-Moore con­tin­ues her in­ti­mate re­la­tion­ship with Katzen­jam­mers, the re­sults of the com­pe­ti­tions held in the name of PanTrin­ba­go, es­pe­cial­ly those that go in Katzen­jam­mers’ favour, will con­tin­ue to be called in­to ques­tion, even with the most qual­i­fied judg­ing pan­el.

Mrs Ram­sey-Moore sim­ply can­not have it both ways. She can­not main­tain her po­si­tion as own­er of a steel­band that is com­pet­ing in the very com­pe­ti­tion she ad­min­is­ters. Fur­ther­more, in seek­ing to jus­ti­fy her stance, her de­fence that all PanTrin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tives must be mem­bers of a steel­band is cause for equal con­cern.

As an or­gan­i­sa­tion that is large­ly fund­ed by tax­pay­ers through the Min­istry of Tourism, Cul­ture and The Arts, Pan Trin­ba­go ought to be held to the same stan­dards as any oth­er state body when it comes to trans­paren­cy and fair­ness. It there­fore stands to rea­son that all PanTrin­ba­go ex­ec­u­tives—not just Ram­sey-Moore—may need to get their hous­es in or­der by not on­ly pub­licly de­clar­ing their in­volve­ment in steel­bands but al­so de­ter­min­ing ahead of the an­nu­al Car­ni­val sea­son which mas­ter they will be serv­ing—Pan Trin­ba­go or their steel­band of choice.

This would have been a good start to­wards ad­dress­ing eth­i­cal and moral con­cerns raised by pan play­ers and mem­bers of the pub­lic. In­stead, the ap­proach by Mrs Ram­sey-Moore, to knock ac­cu­sa­tions out of the park with the words, “Rock so with that,” sug­gests that she was more con­cerned that peo­ple were seem­ing­ly against her than she was in pro­tect­ing the in­tegri­ty and good name of Pan Trin­ba­go which has had its fair share of neg­a­tive pub­lic­i­ty over the years.

In­ter­est­ing­ly, the same crit­i­cism has al­so been lev­elled by us in the past—to no avail—against Win­ston “Gyp­sy” Pe­ters, who, as pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mit­tee (NCC) con­tin­ues to com­pete in na­tion­al com­pe­ti­tions ad­min­is­tered by the NCC.

Like Mrs Ram­sey-Moore, Mr Pe­ters has dis­missed con­cerns about in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ness sur­round­ing his an­nu­al par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Ex­tem­po com­pe­ti­tion, which he won last year. How­ev­er, in our con­sid­ered judge­ment, both should re­move them­selves from of­fi­cial Car­ni­val com­pe­ti­tions since they sim­ply can­not be play­er and ref­er­ee in the same are­na.