To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

The Gov­ern­ment, through its spokesman, Garvin Nicholas, is right when it says that it will not be rushed in­to mak­ing a snap de­ci­sion on the po­lit­i­cal­ly and fi­nan­cial­ly sen­si­tive is­sues sur­round­ing the bailout of some 25,000 hold­ers of short-term in­vest­ment prod­ucts is­sued the Colo­nial Life In­sur­ance Com­pa­ny (Cli­co). As re­port­ed in to­day's edi­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is in pos­ses­sion of a re­port out­lin­ing some op­tions for treat­ing with this is­sue. That re­port was pre­pared by Vas­ant Bharath, the head of the in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee who had been man­dat­ed by the Prime Min­is­ter to con­sult wide­ly on the is­sue. Giv­en the im­por­tance of this mat­ter, no one should ex­pect that Cab­i­net would rush to make a de­ci­sion on an is­sue that in­volves, on the one hand, thou­sands of peo­ple who ploughed an es­ti­mat­ed $12 bil­lion in Cli­co, and on the oth­er hand, the in­vest­ment of tax­pay­ers' funds to the tune of $7.3 bil­lion to bail out the three fi­nan­cial sub­sidiaries of the CL Fi­nan­cial em­pire.

But nei­ther should the pub­lic ex­pect that the Cab­i­net would de­fer se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion of what is the most press­ing is­sue fac­ing the na­tion cur­rent­ly as a re­sult of the threat of le­gal ac­tion by a for­mer po­lit­i­cal friend of those who now hold the reins of pow­er or by the in­ap­pro­pri­ate dead­line is­sued by rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the pol­i­cy­hold­ers' groups. What the coun­try ex­pects is that the Cab­i­net would give ma­ture and time­ly con­sid­er­a­tion to this is­sue of the pos­si­ble re­vi­sions to the plan out­lined by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an in the 2011 bud­get on Sep­tem­ber 8. Those who are press­ing the Gov­ern­ment to take pre­cip­i­tate ac­tion should re­alise that a de­ci­sion in the Cli­co mat­ter will have long-term le­gal, fi­nan­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal ram­i­fi­ca­tions for the coun­try and for the coali­tion of par­ties that forms the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion. In a mat­ter of such wide-rang­ing im­por­tance as this, the Cab­i­net should be en­sure that it re­ceives the best le­gal, fi­nan­cial, eco­nom­ic and po­lit­i­cal ad­vice that the coun­try has avail­able to it–even if this means that the Gov­ern­ment seeks to en­list the as­sis­tance of pro­fes­sion­als in these fields to help it ar­rive at what should be the best de­ci­sion for all con­cerned. Choos­ing an op­tion, or a com­bi­na­tion of op­tions, from among those pre­sent­ed by the in­ter-min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tee, would re­quire the ad­min­is­tra­tion to car­ry out a care­ful bal­anc­ing act.

At the end of the day, the Gov­ern­ment will be re­quired to weigh the pe­cu­niary in­ter­ests of those who have in­vest­ed, in many cas­es, the sav­ings from a life­time of work, ver­sus the in­ter­ests of a larg­er body of tax­pay­ers, who are look­ing to the ad­min­is­tra­tion to con­tin­ue the pro­vi­sion of what the Prime Min­is­ter re­ferred to in a dif­fer­ent con­text as the com­mon wealth of the na­tion: health­care, ed­u­ca­tion, im­proved roads–not to men­tion high­er salaries for pub­lic ser­vants. All of this is be­ing re­quest­ed in the con­text of a macro-eco­nom­ic en­vi­ron­ment which re­mains much less pro­pi­tious to­day than it was two years ago. In its weigh­ing of the var­i­ous in­ter­ests, the Gov­ern­ment should al­so be aware that its de­ci­sion in this mat­ter will be close­ly scrun­tised both by those who are sym­pa­thet­ic to the plight of the Cli­co pol­i­cy­hold­ers and those who feel that they are just a bunch of greedy rich peo­ple who are look­ing to live off the fat of the land. Fi­nal­ly, the rea­son it is so im­por­tant that the Gov­ern­ment get the Cli­co de­ci­sion ab­solute­ly right is be­cause the wrong de­ci­sion could have a dev­as­tat­ing and per­ma­nent im­pact on in­vestor con­fi­dence in the econ­o­my. More than any­thing, the de­ci­sion on Cli­co re­quires fair­ness and eq­ui­ty as well as trans­paren­cy and the prop­er com­mu­ni­ca­tion of nu­ances of what is a tech­ni­cal is­sue.