Dr Win­ford James

To­bag­on­ian Child, per­mit us, Max Al­bert and me, to di­vert briefly in this col­umn from our on­go­ing dis­cus­sion on Town and Coun­try Plan­ning to dis­cuss an­oth­er mat­ter that is al­so im­por­tant to To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment and the na­tion­al re­la­tion­ship be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad: the To­ba­go air­bridge. (In­ci­den­tal­ly, why call it the To­ba­go air­bridge and not the Trinidad air­bridge?)

Trans­porta­tion be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad is, as we all know, not a lux­u­ry but a ne­ces­si­ty. It is the artery through which fam­i­ly life, busi­ness, ed­u­ca­tion, med­ical ac­cess and na­tion­al in­te­gra­tion flow.

And so when Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj pub­licly de­clared that the Cab­i­net was con­sid­er­ing pre­mi­um but un­sub­sidised fares on the air­bridge and fur­ther, that the fare was “noth­ing” to pay, pub­lic re­ac­tion—par­tic­u­lar­ly in To­ba­go—was swift and in­tense.

But let us has­ten to add, Cher­ished Child, that the is­sue was not mere­ly the pro­pos­al it­self, for gov­ern­ments are en­ti­tled to for­mu­late and ex­am­ine pol­i­cy op­tions as a mat­ter of course. The is­sue was the bla­tant flip­pan­cy of the min­is­ter in a con­text of the seem­ing ab­sence of set­tled Cab­i­net dis­cus­sion be­fore pub­lic pro­nounce­ment.

Im­me­di­ate­ly, the pub­lic con­ver­sa­tion be­gan. One voice said, “What is the prob­lem? Keep the sub­sidy and add pre­mi­um seats for those will­ing to pay.” An­oth­er re­tort­ed: “That is easy to say un­til the pre­mi­um struc­ture in­evitably dis­places the nor­mal struc­ture.” A busi­ness­man ar­gued: “If peo­ple need emer­gency trav­el and are will­ing to pay, what is wrong with that?” A To­ba­go moth­er protest­ed: “Easy for you to say. To­ba­go peo­ple know how quick­ly ‘op­tion­al’ things be­come per­ma­nent.” And a pub­lic ser­vant ob­served: “The prob­lem is not even the idea. The prob­lem is who au­tho­rised Ma­haraj’s ini­ti­a­tion of the pub­lic dis­cus­sion?”

That, per­haps, was the sharpest pub­lic point, An­a­lyt­i­cal Child.

Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal was un­usu­al­ly quick and sharp in his pub­lic re­sponse, mak­ing it clear that Cab­i­net had not dis­cussed or ap­proved any such air­fare ad­just­ment and that there was no of­fi­cial pol­i­cy on the mat­ter. And Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar her­self made it clear that the Cab­i­net had not pro­nounced on it.

That is im­por­tant.

When a min­is­ter pub­licly says Cab­i­net is con­sid­er­ing a mat­ter, but the Head of Cab­i­net it­self says it has not yet dis­cussed it, then one of two things must be true: ei­ther the min­is­ter was speak­ing pre­ma­ture­ly or Cab­i­net dis­ci­pline was ab­sent.

Nei­ther is com­fort­ing.

Per­mit us here, Watch­ful Child, a brief satir­i­cal flight in­to an imag­i­nary Cab­i­net room.

Kam­la opens the meet­ing. “So Ma­haraj, what ex­act­ly were you do­ing out there?” Ma­haraj shifts his weight in his chair. “Prime Min­is­ter, I was just be­ing ex­plorato­ry…” “Ex­plorato­ry?” she in­ter­rupts. “Ex­plorato­ry for who? Cab­i­net or you? You imag­ine what Far­ley say­ing or Sham­fa, for that mat­ter?”

Mut­ed con­ver­sa­tions give way to ut­ter si­lence. Mooni­lal clears his throat: “Prime Min­is­ter, with re­spect, To­ba­go was al­ready on fire be­fore break­fast.” Laugh­ter. Jear­lean leans back and re­marks, “One more state­ment like that and our Blue Wave in To­ba­go could turn red.” More laugh­ter. Pad­dy tunes in: “Not good. Not good at all!”

Then Roger mut­ters, “Prime Min­is­ter, I could bench-press him for dis­ci­pline.” Cab­i­net erupts in un­con­trol­lable laugh­ter.

Satire aside, the point is se­ri­ous, Thought­ful Child. Pub­lic pol­i­cy is not made by ca­su­al, undis­cern­ing speech.

It is made by con­sul­ta­tion, analy­sis, and Cab­i­net dis­ci­pline and re­spect for pub­lic con­se­quence.

There is an­oth­er lay­er to this mat­ter. The sub­sidy on the To­ba­go air­bridge is not mere­ly an ac­count­ing ex­er­cise. It rep­re­sents part of the so­cial com­pact be­tween To­ba­go and Trinidad – an ac­knowl­edge­ment that ge­og­ra­phy must not be­come in­equal­i­ty. That is why even the sug­ges­tion of change, how­ev­er ex­plorato­ry, must be han­dled with care, pre­ci­sion, and full pub­lic ex­pla­na­tion.

The wide­spread sen­si­tiv­i­ty in To­ba­go on this mat­ter is root­ed in his­to­ry, Dis­cern­ing Child. Let us re­mind you that there were at least two se­ri­ous at­tempts in pre­vi­ous years to have seg­ments of the air­bridge op­er­at­ed out­side or along­side the gov­ern­ment-man­aged sub­sidy mod­el. Those ex­per­i­ments failed, not be­cause To­ba­go lacked pas­sen­gers but be­cause the eco­nom­ics were un­sus­tain­able. That his­to­ry mat­ters.

Be­fore any se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion of un­sub­sidised pre­mi­um do­mes­tic air­bridge fares, sev­er­al ques­tions must first be an­swered: Who is will­ing to pay? How many? How of­ten? Is there enough busi­ness trav­el be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go to sus­tain such a pre­mi­um mod­el? Would lawyers, con­sul­tants, gov­ern­ment of­fi­cers, emer­gency trav­ellers and busi­nessper­sons sup­port it con­sis­tent­ly enough to main­tain vi­a­bil­i­ty? What load fac­tor would be re­quired? What is the break-even thresh­old? Would it sur­vive six months or a year?

These are not emo­tion­al ques­tions. They are eco­nom­ic ques­tions. And they must be an­swered be­fore pub­lic pol­i­cy is float­ed as if the mat­ter were sim­ple. To­ba­go’s con­cern is, there­fore, not ir­ra­tional. It is his­tor­i­cal. It is prac­ti­cal. It is eco­nom­ic. And it is deeply po­lit­i­cal, for the air­bridge is part of To­ba­go’s life­line to the na­tion.

Words about the air­bridge car­ry weight. Min­is­ters, es­pe­cial­ly new min­is­ters, must un­der­stand that. Cab­i­net dis­ci­pline mat­ters. Pub­lic sen­si­tiv­i­ty mat­ters. And pol­i­cy must be test­ed be­fore it is spo­ken. For in To­ba­go, his­to­ry teach­es us that on the air­bridge, words of­ten trav­el faster than air­craft.

And some­times they dam­age a peo­ple’s des­tiny.

Ed­i­tor’s note: The Prime Min­is­ter, dur­ing the UNC Gov­ern­ment’s one year in of­fice cel­e­bra­tion at Cou­va South Hall carpark on April 26, re­vealed her sup­port for Trade and In­vest­ment Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma “Ka­ma” Ma­haraj’s pro­pos­al to to in­tro­duce two dai­ly, un­sub­sidised Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) flights to To­ba­go cost­ing be­tween $960 to $1,000 re­turn. The Prime Min­is­ter said the pro­pos­al was un­der re­view by Cab­i­net and as­sured the sub­sidised $400 flights were not be­ing re­moved.

Dr Win­ford James is a re­tired UWI lec­tur­er who has been analysing is­sues in ed­u­ca­tion, lan­guage, de­vel­op­ment and pol­i­tics in Trinidad and To­ba­go and the wider Caribbean on ra­dio and TV since the 1970s. He has al­so writ­ten thou­sands of columns for all ma­jor news­pa­pers in the coun­try.