Politi­cians are gen­er­al­ly re­gard­ed as be­ing eco­nom­i­cal with the truth. This has three in­ter­pre­ta­tions.

First, in­for­ma­tion on top­i­cal mat­ters is re­leased in a piece­meal fash­ion to de­lay re­veal­ing the full pic­ture. Sec­ond, re­leas­ing the in­for­ma­tion in bits and pieces is de­signed to paint a pic­ture favourable to the sit­ting ad­min­is­tra­tion. The third is that politi­cians de­lib­er­ate­ly at­tempt to mis­lead the pub­lic. News­pa­pers avoid ad­dress­ing the third op­tion di­rect­ly as it leads to con­fronta­tion, de­mands proof, and could lead to lit­i­ga­tion.

Ar­riv­ing at the truth is like solv­ing a jig­saw puz­zle. Two mat­ters cur­rent­ly in the pub­lic do­main have all the hall­marks of a puz­zle: the 120th Re­port of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion and al­le­ga­tions of con­struc­tion cost over­runs for the new To­ba­go Air­port Ter­mi­nal. Both have deep po­lit­i­cal over­tones in the run-up to the gen­er­al elec­tion and the eval­u­a­tion of the coun­try’s econ­o­my.

The Con­sti­tu­tion on­ly re­quires the SRC to lay the re­port in Par­lia­ment. On this nar­row in­ter­pre­ta­tion, the SRC con­sid­ered its work done, and by sim­ply lay­ing the re­port in Par­lia­ment, the re­port would speak for it­self. There was no press re­lease, no press con­fer­ence, and no ex­plana­to­ry state­ment apart from the re­port it­self, the pre­sump­tion be­ing that the re­port was self-suf­fi­cient and peo­ple would read the re­port in its en­tire­ty.

Every­one quick­ly ze­roed in on their rec­om­men­da­tions, and the ef­fec­tive per­cent­age in­creas­es rel­a­tive to wider po­si­tions of gov­ern­ment ne­go­ti­a­tions. The Op­po­si­tion leader im­me­di­ate­ly cried foul. The Prime Min­is­ter called the Op­po­si­tion leader “delu­sion­al” and promised to be “se­ri­ous, re­spon­si­ble, and car­ing.”

Lat­er, he in­di­cat­ed that the Cab­i­net would ac­cept and im­ple­ment the rec­om­men­da­tion and he would ac­cept re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the back­lash. When the back­lash came, the Prime Min­is­ter sought to pass the buck, re­fer­ring to a let­ter from the Chief Jus­tice threat­en­ing le­gal ac­tion. Al­though the let­ter has not been made pub­lic, the Chief Jus­tice’s le­gal po­si­tion would be in­trigu­ing. “Car­ing” be­came self-in­ter­est.

In speak­ing to the Guardian on De­cem­ber 6, the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer, as sec­re­tary to the SRC, at­tempt­ed to clar­i­fy the in­creas­es in the re­port. How­ev­er, his in­ter­ven­tion has come too late to be of any sig­nif­i­cance or rel­e­vance. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, his po­si­tion has been com­pro­mised by the late­ness of his in­ter­ven­tion and the emo­tion­al heat of the con­trast be­tween the four to five per cent salary in­creas­es he is ne­go­ti­at­ing with gov­ern­ment unions.

Fol­low­ing these events, Min­is­ter Im­bert’s at­tempt to as­suage the al­le­ga­tions of cost over­runs at the To­ba­go Air­port has not en­hanced his cred­i­bil­i­ty. One must take note of Min­is­ter Im­bert’s sit­u­a­tion­al flex­i­bil­i­ty. His June 3 af­fi­davit in the TT Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty mat­ter paints a gloomy eco­nom­ic pic­ture, which is the po­lar op­po­site of the cau­tious op­ti­mism in the 2025 Bud­get speech.

Four work pack­ages were award­ed for the To­ba­go Air­port con­struc­tion project, each un­der dif­fer­ent FIDIC con­tracts. Each work pack­age has dif­fer­ent risks and im­pli­ca­tions for over­runs. Min­is­ter Im­bert’s re­spons­es to date have ad­dressed on­ly the main work pack­age with Chi­na Rail­way Con­struc­tion Caribbean Com­pa­ny Lim­it­ed. He has not ad­dressed progress on oth­er work pack­ages.

The ap­pear­ance of Cab­i­net Note 2199 in the pub­lic do­main helped to jolt Min­is­ter Im­bert’s mem­o­ry. His press con­fer­ence on De­cem­ber 6 cor­rect­ed the in­for­ma­tion he pre­sent­ed on De­cem­ber 5. As with all large projects, the To­ba­go Air­port has chal­lenges, and there will be vari­a­tions. Whilst it may be im­por­tant in the elec­toral cal­cu­la­tions, this project is fund­ed from the pub­lic purse and re­quires a more trans­par­ent ap­proach.