DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter Sean Sobers has is­sued a for­mal apol­o­gy fol­low­ing a breach of min­is­te­r­i­al pro­to­col in­volv­ing a so­cial me­dia ad­ver­tise­ment for a promi­nent lo­cal re­tail­er, Pen­ny­wise.

The 26-sec­ond video, filmed at the Pen­ny­wise out­let in La Ro­maine, fea­tured the high-rank­ing diplo­mat en­dors­ing a pri­vate busi­ness while shop­ping with his fam­i­ly.

“Hel­lo, Trinidad and To­ba­go. I am Sean Sobers, the Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs. I’m here with my fam­i­ly at Pen­ny­wise in La Ro­maine shop­ping for all our house­hold items that we utilise on a dai­ly ba­sis. It is your one-stop shop to come and get all of the things that you think you need. Prices are rea­son­able, the se­lec­tion is great, and staff is fan­tas­tic.”

Speak­ing at a post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s on Thurs­day, Sobers ac­knowl­edged the mis­step and apol­o­gised.

“I am in­formed, du­ly in­formed, that as a Min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment I should not do that. I apol­o­gise if I of­fend­ed any­one for shop­ping at Pen­ny­wise.”

De­spite the apol­o­gy, the Min­is­ter ap­peared to dis­tance him­self from the tech­ni­cal de­f­i­n­i­tion of an en­dorse­ment, de­fend­ing his per­son­al pref­er­ence for the re­tail­er.

“At the end of the day, they have nice stuff. So, I’m not en­dors­ing Pen­ny­wise.”

Ex­plain­ing the cir­cum­stances of the record­ing, Sobers re­vealed he was ap­proached by staff while shop­ping and agreed to the re­quest on the spot.

He framed the in­ci­dent not as a breach of ethics, but as a byprod­uct of the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s “ap­proach­able” pub­lic im­age.

“This is the thing with this ad­min­is­tra­tion, you know. There is a nexus and a prox­im­i­ty be­tween us and the pub­lic that has al­ways ex­ist­ed. I don’t think any mem­ber of this gov­ern­ment is un­ap­proach­able. And I am not. I go out in­to pub­lic on a num­ber of oc­ca­sions, I go to the same places that I’ve al­ways been—same phar­ma­cy, same meat shop, same gro­cery, same Pen­ny­wise —and we are ap­proach­able. I see noth­ing wrong in that,” he said.