To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?Just min­utes af­ter re­ceiv­ing his in­stru­ment of ap­point­ment as the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion on Fri­day, Dr Kei­th Row­ley de­clared that it was his in­ten­tion to write to the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on the is­sue of Jack Warn­er serv­ing as Min­is­ter of Works while hold­ing down a top post at Fi­fa.

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Dr Row­ley said he was seek­ing an opin­ion from the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on whether it was prop­er for Mr Warn­er to sit in Cab­i­net while hold­ing an of­fice in any oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tion, "es­pe­cial­ly a fee-pay­ing of­fice, out­side of Cab­i­net." While Dr Row­ley's move has been sharply crit­i­cised by sup­port­ers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, there is mer­it in an in­quiry about whether Mr Warn­er can serve as Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port and as Fi­fa vice pres­i­dent. The com­mon-sense po­si­tion, based on the West­min­ster tra­di­tion, is that he can­not serve both of­fices and that he will be re­quired to choose one. The tra­di­tion is that on be­com­ing a min­is­ter, the sen­a­tor or MP re­signs all pre­vi­ous jobs or po­si­tions–paid or un­paid–and places their fi­nan­cial af­fairs in trust. Cut­ting ties with pre­vi­ous jobs or po­si­tions and the plac­ing of the new min­is­ter's af­fairs in trust serve to re­move the min­is­ter from po­ten­tial con­flicts of in­ter­est which may arise.

It is not our in­ten­tion to pre­judge this mat­ter. But if the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion de­cides that there is noth­ing wrong in Mr Warn­er serv­ing in both Cab­i­net and Fi­fa at the same time, it seems ob­vi­ous that it would be open­ing the door to a fur­ther de­te­ri­o­ra­tion in the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of T&T. Al­low­ing Jack to keep his jack­et would set an un­palat­able prece­dent. It would mean that the lawyers or the for­mer judge in the Cab­i­net would be able to ac­cept pri­vate briefs or dis­pense pro­fes­sion­al le­gal ad­vice. It would mean that the ra­dio talk show host who be­came min­is­ter would be able to re­sume his dai­ly tirades. Whaaat. It would mean that min­is­ters who wrote news­pa­per columns be­fore tak­ing up their of­fice would be able to re­sume writ­ing their com­men­taries. And it would mean that uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­ers among the Cab­i­net would be able to re­sume teach­ing. Clear­ly, this is one slip­pery slope that pol­i­tics in this coun­try, which has not es­caped un­scathed from the scourge of cor­rup­tion and in­flu­ence-ped­dling, should seek to avoid.

That be­ing said, it would be a great pity if the new Gov­ern­ment were to lose some­one with Jack Warn­er's tremen­dous vi­sion and en­er­gy. He is a man with seem­ing un­par­al­lelled abil­i­ty to work long hours in a fo­cused and ded­i­cat­ed man­ner lead­ing to re­sults. In a coun­try that has been weighed down for decades by a paral­y­sis of analy­sis, which leads to reams of doc­u­ments and re­ports but lit­tle ac­tion, Mr Warn­er has a proven abil­i­ty to get things done–cut­ting through red tape by tap­ping his vast net­work of con­tacts, while not nec­es­sar­i­ly cut­ting cor­ners. Typ­i­cal of the way Mr Warn­er op­er­ates is the process which led to a de­ci­sion to open up the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route.

As the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's new Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, just days af­ter he was sworn in, Mr Warn­er held a meet­ing with rep­re­sen­ta­tives of maxi-taxi groups on the morn­ing of a pub­lic hol­i­day. By the end of the meet­ing he was able to an­nounce that an agree­ment had been reached to al­low pri­vate ve­hi­cles, start­ing on June 16, to use the bus route dur­ing set times of the day for a tri­al pe­ri­od of three months. It may be that the Warn­er ex­per­i­ment for the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route turns out to be a fail­ure as Mr Warn­er's min­is­te­r­i­al pre­de­ces­sor, Colm Im­bert, has al­ready pre­dict­ed. But it could be that in that failed ex­per­i­ment there is a germ of an idea that leads to even in­cre­men­tal suc­cess with re­gard to the peren­ni­al­ly thorny is­sue of traf­fic along the East-West Cor­ri­dor. Such a germ may come from the stip­u­la­tion that pri­vate ve­hi­cles us­ing the Pri­or­i­ty Bus Route dur­ing the stip­u­lat­ed hours should prac­tise car­pool­ing–three or more pas­sen­gers in the ve­hi­cle. T&T needs peo­ple who can think out­side the box and get things done. We hope Mr Warn­er makes the right de­ci­sion.