To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's de­ci­sion to di­rect that the award of the con­tro­ver­sial Air­port Au­thor­i­ty light­ing con­tract "be re­viewed with a view to rescis­sion of same," is proof pos­i­tive that she in­tends to walk the talk when it comes to is­sues of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

The Prime Min­is­ter's de­ci­sion is in­ter­est­ing as it coun­ter­mand­ed the ap­proval of the con­tract giv­en by the line min­is­ter for the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter, Jack Warn­er.

The pub­lic, and po­ten­tial­ly hu­mil­i­at­ing, re­ver­sal of the di­rec­tive giv­en by Mr Warn­er to the man­age­ment of the Air­ports Au­thor­i­ty could not have been an easy de­ci­sion for a fe­male Prime Min­is­ter elect­ed to of­fice less than six months ago.

Mr Warn­er is the chair­man of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and, with his can-do, ac­tion-man rep­u­ta­tion, has quick­ly de­vel­oped in­to one of the most pop­u­lar min­is­ters in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

He is al­so one of the peo­ple who worked the hard­est and gave the most to en­sure the elec­tion of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship on May 24.

It was Warn­er's cru­cial de­ci­sion to break ranks with Bas­deo Pan­day and throw his sup­port be­hind Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar that would have been the po­lit­i­cal tip­ping point in sweep­ing aside the ves­tiges of the op­po­si­tion's an­cient regime.

The Prime Min­is­ter's de­ci­sion to in­sist on trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty al­so casts her in stark con­trast to the ad­min­is­tra­tion which pre­ced­ed hers. Faced with ear­ly al­le­ga­tions of wrong-do­ing sur­round­ing the award of con­tracts by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott), the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion chose to turn off its fig­u­ra­tive hear­ing aid to the en­su­ing al­le­ga­tions and charges in the in­ter­est of get­ting the job done.

This ap­par­ent ex­pe­di­en­cy even­tu­al­ly cost the PNM the gov­ern­ment.

Sens­ing the im­mi­nent dan­ger to her ad­min­is­tra­tion, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar chose to step in ear­ly and nip the po­ten­tial Air­port Au­thor­i­ty light­ing fi­as­co in the bud in the hope that by do­ing so she would have sent a mes­sage of se­ri­ous­ness of pur­pose in her fight against any­thing that smacks of a lack of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty.

Hav­ing stopped the award of the con­tract, it is im­por­tant that the Prime Min­is­ter fol­low through with her in­ten­tions and en­sure that every­thing in the process of pro­cure­ment for the award of the con­tract be thor­ough­ly re­viewed.

That re­view needs to get to the bot­tom of the de­ci­sion to split the $68 mil­lion light­ing re­pair con­tract that had al­ready been ap­proved for one con­trac­tor for both the To­ba­go and Trinidad ter­mi­nals in­to a To­ba­go con­tract and a Trinidad con­tract.

The re­view would need to un­earth how it came to pass that the sec­ond-ranked com­pa­ny man­aged to re­ceive the larg­er Trinidad con­tract, while the first-ranked com­pa­ny re­ceived the small­er To­ba­go con­tract.

And, hope­ful­ly, the re­view will throw some light on how the light­ing con­tract es­ca­lat­ed from $68 mil­lion ($47 mil­lion for the Trinidad run­way and $21 mil­lion for To­ba­go's) to $93 mil­lion ($57,785,768.92 VAT ex­clu­sive for the Trinidad run­way and $35,402,400.62 for To­ba­go).

The re­view of the con­tract must not on­ly be done, it must be wide­ly per­ceived to have been prop­er­ly done.Hav­ing set the stan­dard by stop­ping the con­tract and call­ing for a re­view "with a view to rescis­sion of same," the Prime Min­is­ter must be brave enough to both en­sure that the probe is thor­ough and trans­par­ent and that if there is any breach of the es­tab­lished pro­to­cols, that those who are guilty of such breach­es have the ap­pro­pri­ate pun­ish­ment ap­plied to them–with­out re­gard to the con­se­quences of the po­ten­tial fall­out.

It is with ac­tions like this that a cul­ture of in­tegri­ty be­comes in­grained and deeply root­ed.