To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?Ob­vi­ous­ly un­der­stand­ing that it re­quires much more to jus­ti­fy the pur­chase and erec­tion of a flag for $2 mil­lion, Sports Min­is­ter Gary Hunt is now en­gaged in dis­sem­bling, that is seek­ing to hide the re­al­i­ty of the cost by di­ver­sion­ary tac­tics. In this case, Mr Hunt has thrown out the names of Hase­ly Craw­ford, Ato Boldon, Richard Thomp­son and Bri­an Lara, hop­ing to strike a con­nec­tion in the minds of the pub­lic that this flag, at this stu­pen­dous cost, is some­how con­nect­ed to these re­al he­roes of the peo­ple of T&T. Of­fence can be tak­en here with this cheap­en­ing of the achieve­ments of these ath­letes by a politi­cian at­tempt­ing to jus­ti­fy, when cor­nered, what in any lan­guage is ex­trav­a­gant ex­pen­di­ture.

His at­tempt at ra­tio­nal­is­ing the ex­pen­di­ture by claim­ing that "every day the flag flies it would do dam­age con­trol ...as a sym­bol of na­tion­al pride," is re­al­ly an at­tempt to in­sult the col­lec­tive in­tel­li­gence of the peo­ple of T&T. This pat­tern of di­ver­sion goes back a cou­ple weeks when ques­tions were first raised about the cost of the flag. First, the min­is­ter said he could not say what the cost of the flag was. In fact at the post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence last week when asked about the cost he al­most com­mit­ted to say­ing $2 mil­lion but stopped him­self at the last mo­ment and adopt­ed the tac­tic then of say­ing that even if the flag had cost $2 mil­lion its worth was in in­still­ing na­tion­al pride.

How­ev­er, with­in a few days of re­al­is­ing that the con­cerns about the large ex­pen­di­ture on the flag were not go­ing away, he ac­com­pa­nied the chair­man of the Sports Com­pa­ny, Ken­neth Charles, to a news con­fer­ence to al­low the of­fi­cial to con­firm to the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty the $2 mil­lion cost of the flag. There are ques­tions that need to be asked about a min­is­ter not know­ing the cost of a flag when the cost reach­es such as­tro­nom­i­cal pro­por­tions: is he al­low­ing his sub­or­di­nates to make de­ci­sions on the spend­ing of such large sums of pub­lic mon­ey on a flag, with­out know­ing from the start about the project and what it would cost? Did he not have the nor­mal min­is­te­r­i­al over­sight of this project, in­clud­ing its cost?

Min­is­ter Hunt's han­dling of this mat­ter seems to be less than ad­e­quate. But the ex­pen­di­ture on the flag and its erec­tion does fall in­to a pat­tern of ex­trav­a­gance so preva­lent in the op­er­a­tions of this Gov­ern­ment. With­in Mr Hunt's own port­fo­lio there is the waste be­ing dai­ly demon­strat­ed on the Bri­an Lara Sta­di­um, two years be­hind sched­ule and over by $100 mil­lion from the orig­i­nal cost (as re­vealed this week by the Hous­ing Min­is­ter). Yet no one, not even the Sports Min­is­ter, is able to say when the sta­di­um will be fin­ished and what will be the fi­nal cost. As part of a pat­tern of ex­trav­a­gance with pub­lic funds is the con­struc­tion of a new build­ing on the com­pound of the Prime Min­is­ter's Res­i­dence and Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre, to host 1,000 peo­ple in a con­cert hall set­ting.

The pre­sump­tion must be that this new pri­vate place would be a place for the Prime Min­is­ter to host vis­it­ing lead­ers in pri­vate con­certs. The re­al­i­ty is that such ex­trav­a­gance is be­ing en­gaged in when there are far more press­ing needs of a hu­man na­ture to be at­tend­ed to. In every medi­um of pub­lic opin­ion over the last week since this flag mat­ter broke, there have been any num­ber of sug­ges­tions as to how this mon­ey could have been used to fill re­al needs of peo­ple in this so­ci­ety. While it is not the in­ten­tion of this news­pa­per to at­tempt to "back-seat dri­ve" an ad­min­is­tra­tion that was con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly elect­ed to man­age the coun­try's af­fairs two years ago, the Gov­ern­ment needs to be a lit­tle more sen­si­tive to the dis­qui­et its ex­pen­di­ture on non-es­sen­tials is caus­ing at this time of eco­nom­ic re­ces­sion.