To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

In the last few weeks, the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go, led by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment, was called on to re­spond to sev­er­al trou­bling al­le­ga­tions that sug­gest min­istries were forg­ing ahead with the sign­ing of mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar con­tracts in the midst of an elec­tion cam­paign. On Wednes­day, Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Mar­i­ano Browne de­nied that the gov­ern­ment had signed a con­tract worth US$17 mil­lion to ac­cess as many as 25 new air­craft to re­vamp the Caribbean Air­lines fleet. Just a few days be­fore, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert dis­missed claims that a $4-bil­lion-dol­lar con­tract was signed for a pro­posed high­way be­tween San Fer­nan­do and Ma­yaro. "Ten­ders have been in­vit­ed for the pro­posed high­way be­tween San Fer­nan­do and Ma­yaro and the high­way be­tween San Fer­nan­do and Point Fortin," Im­bert clar­i­fied, not­ing that the gov­ern­ment was at least two months away from con­tract sign­ings for the pro­posed high­way works.

In late April, the gov­ern­ment signed the Mar­itime Bound­ary De­lim­i­ta­tion Treaty be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go and Grena­da, defin­ing the bound­ary line of ju­ris­dic­tion be­tween the two coun­tries. What should have been a mat­ter of rou­tine gov­ern­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion raised eye­brows, be­cause of its prox­im­i­ty to the an­nounce­ment of the elec­tion date and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that it breached the due process of Trinidad and To­ba­go's laws be­cause there was no op­por­tu­ni­ty for Cab­i­net, dis­solved in the wake of the dis­so­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment, to rat­i­fy the treaty. Fur­ther to that, at the time of the sign­ing, no in­for­ma­tion about the specifics of the bound­ary agree­ment was avail­able. In the wake of the very vo­cal con­cerns about the bound­ary agree­ment with Bar­ba­dos, it would have seemed clear that the gov­ern­ment should have pro­ceed­ed with the Grena­da treaty in a spir­it of ab­solute ad­her­ence to pro­to­col and trans­paren­cy.

The most re­cent con­cerns about the PNM gov­ern­ment's ap­par­ent will­ing­ness to pro­ceed with the na­tion's busi­ness as if it were not en­gaged in pitched po­lit­i­cal bat­tle with an Op­po­si­tion par­ty keen and ea­ger to dis­place it, found root in the trou­bled soil of WASA. On Thurs­day, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar claimed that a con­tract be­tween WASA and a new­ly-formed com­pa­ny, Mer­hav Meko­rot De­vel­op­ment Trinidad and To­ba­go Ltd (MMDTT), was ex­e­cut­ed in haste, suf­fered from a lack of trans­paren­cy and was in­ap­pro­pri­ate, giv­en the prox­im­i­ty of the elec­tion. In re­sponse, WASA's chair­man, Shafeek Sul­tan-Khan, re­spond­ed that the con­tract car­ried con­di­tion­al­i­ties which must be met be­fore it be­came valid. Sul­tan-Khan did not clar­i­fy what those con­di­tion­al­i­ties were. Still, there are a num­ber of as­pects of the deal that re­main trou­bling, not the least of which is the method of fi­nanc­ing that the gov­ern­ment has agreed to on this project.

The con­tract com­mits Trinidad and To­ba­go to a first pay­ment of $66 mil­lion with­in 15 days of sign­ing the con­tract with an­oth­er pay­ment of $66 mil­lion with­in 60 days of the first pay­ment. What, it must be asked, does Trinidad and To­ba­go get for an in­vest­ment of one-fifth of the open-end­ed con­tract fee, a sum WASA claims will be held in es­crow?

This is a con­tract that, it is claimed, holds MMDTT li­able for just $66 mil­lion, should there be ir­rec­on­cil­able breach­es of the con­tract arrange­ment. While WASA's an­a­lysts may have been en­tranced by the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the Is­raeli state wa­ter­works firm be­hind the spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­ny formed for the Trinidad and To­ba­go project, PSA labour leader Wat­son Duke was far less im­pressed, call­ing on work­ers to boy­cott the project. Min­is­ter of For­eign Af­fairs Paula Gopee-Scoon dis­missed con­cerns about the tim­ing of the Grena­da bound­ary sign­ing.

"It is a com­ple­tion of work," she said. On the WASA deal, Shafeek Sul­tan-Khan said: "Whichev­er gov­ern­ment comes in­to pow­er will have to deal with this." And both may well be right, but there is fact, and then there are the pro­to­cols of gov­er­nance that should have been ob­served. Once the elec­tions were called, Par­lia­ment and the Cab­i­net dis­solved and the na­tion placed in the flux state that at­tends con­tin­u­ous cam­paign­ing for pub­lic of­fice, it would have been far more ap­pro­pri­ate for the Gov­ern­ment to shift to main­te­nance mode, man­ag­ing the busi­ness of the coun­try while no­ti­fy­ing its de­vel­op­ment part­ners that the con­clu­sion of busi­ness in hand would need to wait un­til the elec­tion out­come on May 25. Supreme con­fi­dence in the elec­tion re­sult may have dri­ven these un­for­tu­nate de­ci­sions, but they re­sult­ed in un­nec­es­sary dis­trac­tions that could have been eas­i­ly avoid­ed in the in­ter­ests of more trans­par­ent and ap­pro­pri­ate gov­er­nance pro­ce­dures.