The con­vic­tion of so­ca's on­ly su­per­star, Machel Mon­tano, and his pro­duc­er, song­writer and the mu­si­cian be­hind the Mon­tano ag­gre­ga­tion and suc­cess, Ker­nal Roberts, on se­ri­ous as­sault and ob­scene lan­guage charges has had a huge im­pact on the na­tion­al con­scious­ness.

As could be ex­pect­ed, the con­vic­tion is pro­vok­ing dis­cus­sion and ques­tions about the treat­ment Mr Mon­tano should re­ceive from the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem. Should he be sum­mar­i­ly sent off to prison, as oth­ers of less im­por­tant stand­ing in the com­mu­ni­ty would be, with­out a ques­tion be­ing raised? Or should the mag­is­trate work out some spe­cial dis­pen­sa­tion for these young men who have grown up on a stage be­fore our eyes?

That is a de­bate that will go on long af­ter the mag­is­trate de­ter­mines whether there should be a cus­to­di­al sen­tence for the two, or whether, giv­en what­ev­er ex­ten­u­at­ing cir­cum­stances may be con­sid­ered, some form of com­mu­ni­ty ser­vice would be more ap­pro­pri­ate than in­car­cer­a­tion. That ar­gu­ment will no doubt ex­plode on­to the na­tion­al can­vas in a month's time.

For the mo­ment though, the most press­ing con­tention, for which there is no rea­son to wait, is whether the spon­sor­ship deals of Mr Mon­tano, es­pe­cial­ly those in­volv­ing state agen­cies, should be im­me­di­ate­ly can­celled. TSTT's man­age­ment has telegraphed ear­ly its po­si­tion that it will await the out­come of the mag­is­trate's sen­tenc­ing and Mr Mon­tano's "plans for mov­ing for­ward once the sen­tence is de­liv­ered."

Caribbean Air­lines and oth­er spon­sors who use the im­age of Mr Mon­tano to win favour with con­sumers have so far re­mained qui­et, per­haps wait­ing to see which way the wind is blow­ing in pub­lic opin­ion. A sim­i­lar po­si­tion has been tak­en by Plan­ning Min­is­ter Dr Bhoe Tewarie, who has said that on­ly when the sen­tence is re­vealed will he com­ment.

These po­si­tions may be ill-found­ed, how­ev­er, if they are in­tend­ed to give Mr Mon­tano the ben­e­fit of a doubt which ceased to ex­ist on Mon­day. The so­ca stars were not mere­ly charged with as­sault this week, but con­vict­ed. They now have crim­i­nal records.

What is called for is an hon­est, con­sid­ered re­sponse with re­gard to whether Mr Mon­tano is fit, af­ter his con­vic­tion on very se­ri­ous charges of at­tack­ing a group of peo­ple, to be a role mod­el for young peo­ple and oth­er cit­i­zens and to hold the po­si­tion of cul­tur­al am­bas­sador of the na­tion. Will the po­si­tions of the state-owned com­pa­nies and the Gov­ern­ment be de­ter­mined by the sever­i­ty of the sen­tence? Should they?

It should be re­mem­bered that Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­cent­ly said she has the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to deal even-hand­ed­ly with all cit­i­zens.

If the state-owned com­pa­nies and the cen­tral Gov­ern­ment need to find out what are the in­ter­na­tion­al best prac­tices with re­gard to such high-pro­file in­di­vid­u­als and their spon­sor­ship arrange­ments, they should look no fur­ther than per­haps the great­est golfer the world has seen, Tiger Woods, and his fel­low Amer­i­can, cy­clist Lance Arm­strong, who were stripped of spon­sor­ship and, in the in­stance of Arm­strong, all of his cy­cling awards.

Nei­ther of these two re­al in­ter­na­tion­al su­per­stars was con­vict­ed of a crim­i­nal of­fence. Those stand­ing on the side­lines ob­serv­ing this dra­ma played out will ask why Mr Mon­tano should be any dif­fer­ent. Some will say that hold­ing celebri­ty sta­tus places an even greater re­quire­ment on the young men to es­tab­lish and hold to stan­dards that are ac­cept­able to the wider pop­u­la­tion.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so faces a se­ri­ous prob­lem of cred­i­bil­i­ty over whether it should tap the two en­ter­tain­ers on the wrist while con­tin­u­ing to hold them up as role mod­els, at the same time that the se­cu­ri­ty forces and courts of the land hunt down and jail no-name young crim­i­nals.