Last week was not a very pleas­ant one for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment as mixed and con­fused mes­sages and sig­nals emerged from its in­ner sanc­tum.Top of the list was the com­mu­ni­ca­tions fi­as­co sur­round­ing the is­sue of who has con­trol over the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency (SIA).

Next in line was the pub­lic de­c­la­ra­tion of war be­tween Min­is­ter of Works and Trans­port, Jack Warn­er, and the board of di­rec­tors of Caribbean Air­lines. Fin­ish­ing in third place to com­plete the tri­fec­ta was the flip-flop on the Nicky Mi­naj con­cert. Start­ing with the run­away win­ner which was the SIA com­mu­ni­ca­tions night­mare, the Prime Min­is­ter was forced to clear the air on her ini­tial re­lease af­ter the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice, Dwayne Gibbs, took a hard line to say that he was not in charge of the agency.

In the mid­dle of all of this, the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice, Her­bert Vol­ney, had re­vealed that the files were de­stroyed by two un­known Is­raeli men.

The amount of con­fu­sion that has now emerged over this af­fair is caus­ing the Gov­ern­ment no end of grief, which was not sup­posed to hap­pen. When the Prime Min­is­ter re­vealed this scan­dal to Par­lia­ment with all of the fan­fare that she could have mus­tered, one did not think that this could pos­si­bly back­fire on her.

Now peo­ple are ask­ing ques­tions about who has the files. The main rea­son why that has be­come an is­sue is be­cause the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice stood up and said the SIA is a state agency and it is not un­der his ju­ris­dic­tion. This con­tra­dict­ed the Prime Min­is­ter.

Gibbs has al­so moved swift­ly to get back to his main job of fight­ing crime as he led a lock­down op­er­a­tion in John John the day af­ter his chal­lenge of the Prime Min­is­ter's state­ment. That lock­down op­er­a­tion kicked off what he has termed a "tak­ing back com­mu­ni­ties" plan. Gibbs has said that he will con­tin­ue these kinds of op­er­a­tions in oth­er crime hot spots. If the Gov­ern­ment wants ac­tion on crime, then it seems that such ac­tion has start­ed.

Back on the SIA front, this is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple where the Prime Min­is­ter is be­ing forced to make cor­rec­tions and amend­ments to her pub­lic state­ments which sug­gests that there is an on­go­ing in­ter­nal com­mu­ni­ca­tions prob­lem that needs fix­ing.

At the mo­ment, there is no press sec­re­tary as Garvin Nicholas has tak­en up the job as High Com­mis­sion­er to Lon­don. One won­ders who is han­dling com­mu­ni­ca­tions for the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. An­oth­er brew­ing con­tro­ver­sy is the vir­tu­al war be­tween Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and the Caribbean Air­lines board of di­rec­tors.

Warn­er let it be known last week that the CAL Board does not com­mu­ni­cate with him and as far as he is con­cerned they do not re­port to him. The CAL Board struck back in a me­dia re­lease to say that they sent min­utes of their last meet­ing to his Min­istry re­cent­ly.

With such open hos­til­i­ty be­tween the line Min­is­ter and the Board, one won­ders where this con­tro­ver­sy is go­ing to go. In the mid­dle of it is the mat­ter of the dis­missal of the chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer, Cap­tain Ian Brun­ton.

This state of af­fairs can­not con­tin­ue and the Prime Min­is­ter may very well have to in­ter­vene be­cause it is turn­ing in­to a heavy­weight box­ing match be­tween Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er and chair­man George Nicholas III. At a time when the CAL Board is ques­tion­ing an air­craft pur­chase deal that was ap­proved by Cab­i­net, one won­ders whether there are two pi­lots in the CAL cock­pit. One wants to use run­way 09 head­ing east and the oth­er wants to use run­way 27 head­ing west. An in­ter­ven­tion is ur­gent­ly re­quired be­fore the throt­tle is pushed for­ward.

And now we come to the Nicky Mi­naj con­cert. It has now been re­vealed that the Gov­ern­ment spent TT$869,000 of tax­pay­ers' mon­ey to as­sist the pro­mo­tion of this con­cert that launched Min­is­ter Anil Roberts' "Lo­cal­ize It" ini­tia­tive. The heart of the con­tro­ver­sy lies in the call for an au­dit of the con­cert by Diego Mar­tin Cen­tral MP Dr Amery Browne and the at­ten­dant al­le­ga­tions made by him.

On the oth­er side, Min­is­ter Anil Roberts has ar­gued that when­ev­er a state agency gives fi­nan­cial sup­port for an event, one does not have to con­duct an au­dit each time. Per­haps, the cen­tral is­sue here re­volves around what the Gov­ern­ment is try­ing to pro­mote. At first it was stat­ed that there were no ob­scene lyrics at the Nicky Mi­naj con­cert and then it was proven that there were. Min­is­ter Roberts had to apol­o­gise to Par­lia­ment for that.

Should the Gov­ern­ment be spend­ing tax­pay­er dol­lars to pro­mote such con­certs and the at­ten­dant val­ues that they high­light? Dr Browne pressed hard on the fi­nan­cial ques­tions sur­round­ing the con­cert and earned him­self the wrong end of a rarely-used Stand­ing Or­der. If he wants to pur­sue this, he may have to re­vise his strat­e­gy. The sum to­tal of last week was ei­ther a com­e­dy or tragedy. You de­cide.