Caribbean Air­lines Lim­it­ed (CAL) is ex­pect­ed to break its si­lence with­in days as spec­u­la­tion mounts over sweep­ing in­ter­nal changes, in­clud­ing the re­port­ed mu­tu­al sep­a­ra­tion of for­mer Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer Garvin Med­era.

A mem­ber of the air­line’s board con­firmed to Guardian Me­dia that a for­mal state­ment will be re­leased “short­ly”.

“We’ll have a com­mu­ni­ca­tion from Caribbean Air­lines in due course, with­in a week or so ... for sure,” the di­rec­tor said.

The of­fi­cial de­clined to elab­o­rate on the rea­sons for the shake-up or Med­era’s ex­it. When asked whether a gag or­der had been placed on board mem­bers, the source dis­missed the claim, say­ing the pub­lic was “just hear­ing what oth­er peo­ple said out there”.

Pressed on whether Med­era had been dis­missed or left by mu­tu­al agree­ment, the di­rec­tor said, “No, I can’t dis­cuss that at this time.”

The de­vel­op­ments have in­ten­si­fied pub­lic ques­tions about the lead­er­ship tran­si­tion and the scope of re­struc­tur­ing un­der­way at the state-owned car­ri­er.

Re­peat­ed at­tempts to con­tact CAL Chair­man Rey­na Kow­lessar were un­suc­cess­ful. Calls to her mo­bile went unan­swered, and ques­tions sent via What­sApp al­so re­ceived no re­sponse.

Among the ques­tions sub­mit­ted were:

* What prompt­ed the re­struc­tur­ing, and how does the board jus­ti­fy the changes?

* Was Med­era’s de­par­ture vol­un­tary or part of a wider strate­gic shift?

* Should the pub­lic view the re­cent ex­ec­u­tive ex­its as in­sta­bil­i­ty or re­new­al?

* How will the changes im­pact per­for­mance, prof­itabil­i­ty, and ac­count­abil­i­ty?

* Why has there been no for­mal state­ment from CAL, giv­en its state-owned sta­tus?

* To what ex­tent does gov­ern­ment in­flu­ence board de­ci­sions and re­struc­tur­ing strat­e­gy?

On Mon­day, Guardian Me­dia al­so ap­proached Chief Op­er­at­ing Of­fi­cer and act­ing CEO Nir­mala Ra­mai at the ACI-LAC An­nu­al As­sem­bly Con­fer­ence and Ex­hi­bi­tion. She de­clined to com­ment.

“I do apol­o­gise, but I’m not able to speak to you at this mo­ment on the mat­ter. We’re just break­ing for lunch,” Ra­mai said af­ter a pan­el on cli­mate change.

When pressed, Ra­mai was es­cort­ed away by an as­so­ciate who in­ter­vened mid-con­ver­sa­tion.

For­mer min­is­ter urges cau­tion

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Karen Nunez-Tesheira has urged cau­tion in ac­cept­ing Gov­ern­ment’s ex­pla­na­tion of the re­cent changes at CAL, warn­ing that the pub­lic may be hear­ing on­ly “one side” of the sto­ry.

Speak­ing by phone, she re­called her ex­pe­ri­ence man­ag­ing the CL Fi­nan­cial cri­sis, not­ing that is­sues in­volv­ing state en­ter­pris­es are of­ten far more com­plex than they ap­pear.

“You do not re­al­ly know what is go­ing on be­hind the scenes,” she said. “There may be very good ex­pla­na­tions for what is be­ing said to the me­dia and giv­ing a very one-sided view of CAL.”

Nunez-Tesheira sug­gest­ed that Gov­ern­ment may be shap­ing pub­lic per­cep­tion ahead of ma­jor de­ci­sions in­volv­ing the air­line.

“One can’t help but think that this is in­tend­ed to make peo­ple be­lieve there has been ques­tion­able fi­nanc­ing at CAL and that this gov­ern­ment is step­ping in to clean it up—just as with CEPEP and URP. But based on my ex­pe­ri­ence, there’s al­ways an­oth­er side, and I sus­pect we’re not hear­ing the whole truth.”

She al­so raised con­cerns about what she de­scribed as an eth­nic im­bal­ance in state board ap­point­ments, claim­ing that “near­ly every sin­gle state board chair­per­son has a Hin­du East In­di­an name”, in con­tra­dic­tion to the Prime Min­is­ter’s stat­ed com­mit­ment to in­clu­siv­i­ty.

“That flies in the face of the cam­paign promise that when we win, every­body wins,” she said, call­ing on Gov­ern­ment to en­sure lead­er­ship di­ver­si­ty re­flects the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion.

Ex­ec­u­tive de­par­tures

* Kern Gar­diner, Ex­ec­u­tive Man­ag­er for Fi­nance, was ter­mi­nat­ed on Sep­tem­ber 16, days be­fore his pro­ba­tion end­ed.

* Varuna Kuars­ingh, Chief Fi­nan­cial Of­fi­cer, was sent on leave lat­er ex­tend­ed to Oc­to­ber 10.

* Garvin Med­era, Chief Ex­ec­u­tive Of­fi­cer, re­port­ed­ly en­tered in­to a mu­tu­al sep­a­ra­tion agree­ment last week.

* Shameer “Ron­nie” Mo­hammed, for­mer chair­man, re­signed in May.

The cur­rent board re­ceived its in­stru­ments of ap­point­ment on June 24.

To date, Caribbean Air­lines has not is­sued any of­fi­cial state­ment con­firm­ing the terms of Med­era’s de­par­ture or ex­plain­ing the full scope of its re­struc­tur­ing.