To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Min­is­ter of Trade Mar­i­ano Browne took up the cause of the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance dur­ing the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence on Thurs­day, in de­nounc­ing what he de­scribed as in­ac­cu­rate re­port­ing of the cost of the four he­li­copters be­ing ac­quired by the Gov­ern­ment from US man­u­fac­tur­er Agus­ta-West­land. Many of Min­is­ter Browne's ar­gu­ments are sim­ply disin­gen­u­ous. He not­ed that the sup­pli­er is based in the US, and not Italy, deft­ly by­pass­ing the truth of the mat­ter, which is that Agus­ta-West­land is a ful­ly- owned sub­sidiary of Ital­ian aero­space con­glom­er­ate, Fin­mec­ca­ni­ca SpA. It is, re­gret­tably, on this ba­sis that the Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to en­gage in spu­ri­ous claims of re­port­ing in­ac­cu­ra­cies, which it sees as be­ing con­trary to its mes­sag­ing ef­forts.

The Trade Min­is­ter, don­ning his old Fi­nance Min­istry hat for his pre­sen­ta­tion on the he­li­copter pur­chase, on be­half of Karen Nunez-Teshiera, de­cid­ed that split­ting hairs would be the or­der of the day, an­nounc­ing that the he­li­copters will not cost $2 bil­lion, but would, in fact, cost tax­pay­ers $585 mil­lion. The ad­di­tion­al cost, he ex­plained, would be in­vest­ed over sev­en years in "train­ing for 136 pi­lots, spare parts, main­te­nance and the de­vel­op­ment of sup­port fa­cil­i­ties to ac­com­mo­date the new equip­ment af­ter it ar­rives."

While these costs are not con­sid­ered ab­nor­mal for the cre­ation of lo­cal sup­port ser­vices and staff to keep four state-of-the-art he­li­copters in the air, Mr Browne's in­sis­tence, that tax­pay­ers con­sid­er these costs to be some­how sep­a­rate from the cost of buy­ing the ac­tu­al he­li­copters, bor­ders on the ab­surd.

The care­ful read­er is left to as­sume that the Gov­ern­ment is en­gag­ing in this kind of dou­ble­s­peak dis­trac­tion to draw at­ten­tion away from the core is­sues sur­round­ing its pur­chase, which will re­quire an in­vest­ment that's dis­turbing­ly close to the sum of mon­ey that's salt­ed away against fu­ture fi­nan­cial short­falls in the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion fund. Framed in that con­text, it is sen­si­ble for the pub­lic to ques­tion that de­ci­sion to in­vest that much mon­ey, for what is be­ing pro­posed as an am­pli­fi­ca­tion of ex­ist­ing "eye in the sky" ini­tia­tives cur­rent­ly in use by the Air Guard, the air­lift and sur­veil­lance arm of Sautt. Against what re­search and re­sults is this growth in air­borne tac­tics be­ing weighed? Sure­ly, Sautt must have some re­sults and sta­tis­tics to show for its ef­forts over the years that the Air Guard has been in ex­is­tence, de­ploy­ing two he­li­copters in the ser­vice of the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty, a S76 Siko­rsky and a Eu­ro­copter AS 355 FX.

It sure­ly is not too much to ex­pect a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter to meet con­cerns about what re­mains an ex­pen­di­ture of two bil­lion dol­lars, no mat­ter how his speech­writ­ers try to slice and dice it, with some ev­i­dence of pre­vi­ous ac­com­plish­ments at­trib­ut­able to he­li­copters cur­rent­ly in ser­vice that would be de­ci­sive­ly am­pli­fied by these new ad­di­tions to the Air Guard fleet. The sim­plest of ques­tions, whether Trinidad and To­ba­go needs four he­li­copters tasked with the busi­ness of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, re­mains unan­swered, and Min­is­ter Browne's re­sponse stands as a shame­ful at­tempt at rephras­ing and dis­miss­ing the fun­da­men­tal ques­tions sur­round­ing a pur­chase that is still to be ad­e­quate­ly jus­ti­fied. So, Min­is­ter Browne, giv­en your en­thu­si­asm for de­tail, and the an­tic­i­pat­ed ar­rival of two of these he­li­copters next month, per­haps you might be mind­ed to an­swer some of these ques­tions.

On what sta­tis­ti­cal and ex­per­i­men­tial ba­sis is the Gov­ern­ment dri­ving this pur­chase of four he­li­copters, each of which will cost Trinidad and To­ba­go TT$500 mil­lion over the next sev­en years? Bris­tow Caribbean is one of four part­ners in a con­sor­tium cre­at­ed to pro­vide train­ing and sup­port ser­vices for the he­li­copters. Will the par­tic­i­pa­tion of this lo­cal com­pa­ny guar­an­tee that the sev­en years of sup­port in­vest­ment will de­liv­er re­turns in skills and in­fra­struc­ture? What, specif­i­cal­ly, will these four he­li­copters be tasked with on be­half of the na­tion af­ter their ar­rival in the coun­try, and what strate­gies does the Gov­ern­ment hope to im­ple­ment to ef­fect change in the sta­tus quo of crime de­tec­tion and law en­force­ment? The in­quir­ing minds at­tached to the tax-pay­ing wal­lets fund­ing this ex­er­cise need to know.