On Wednes­day, the T&T Guardian took the un­usu­al, but cer­tain­ly not un­prece­dent­ed, step of lead­ing the news­pa­per with an ed­i­to­r­i­al that start­ed on page 1 and con­tin­ued on page 12.

The news­pa­per did this be­cause it want­ed its read­ers to pay par­tic­u­lar at­ten­tion to an is­sue the me­dia com­pa­ny deemed to be of crit­i­cal im­por­tance.

The ed­i­to­r­i­al, which was head­lined ‘Dear PM, Let’s tread care­ful­ly,’ served to draw at­ten­tion to Wednes­day’s ex­tra­or­di­nary sit­ting of the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives that de­lib­er­at­ed on amend­ments, brought by Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert, to the Pub­lic Pro­cure­ment and Dis­pos­al of Pub­lic Act.

Both Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and Mr Im­bert took strong ex­cep­tion to the ed­i­to­r­i­al with the coun­try’s leader ques­tion­ing: “What as­pect of the bill that is be­fore us here to­day, the amend­ments, has any­thing to do with the el­i­gi­bil­i­ty list?” None, he said.

The source of the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­par­ent dis­com­fort with the ed­i­to­r­i­al was its ref­er­ence to clause 5 of the orig­i­nal Ju­ly 2023 amend­ments.

That amend­ment was meant to change sec­tion 63(1) of the 2015 Act, which gave a min­is­ter of fi­nance, on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Of­fice of Pro­cure­ment Reg­u­la­tion (Of­fice), the abil­i­ty to make reg­u­la­tions re­gard­ing the ad­di­tion to, or re­moval from, a list of sup­pli­ers or con­trac­tors “who shall not par­tic­i­pate in pro­cure­ment pro­ceed­ings.”

Ac­cord­ing to sec­tion 58(4) of the 2015 Act: “The Min­is­ter, on the ad­vice of the Of­fice, may make reg­u­la­tions to spec­i­fy the mech­a­nism and man­ner for adding a sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor to the in­el­i­gi­bil­i­ty list, in­clud­ing the pro­ce­dure for re­mov­ing a sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor from an in­el­i­gi­bil­i­ty list.”

Clause 5 of the Ju­ly 2023 amend­ments em­pow­ered a min­is­ter of fi­nance to not on­ly act on the ad­vice of the Of­fice but al­so at his own dis­cre­tion.

This clear­ly meant a min­is­ter of fi­nance, at his own dis­cre­tion, could make reg­u­la­tions “to spec­i­fy the mech­a­nism and man­ner” for adding a sup­pli­er or con­trac­tor to or re­mov­ing them from the in­el­i­gi­bil­i­ty list.

The orig­i­nal clause 5 opened the door to the dan­ger­ous pos­si­bil­i­ty that min­is­ters of fi­nance in the fu­ture could use their pow­er to make reg­u­la­tions per­tain­ing to the in­el­i­gi­bil­i­ty list to pre­vent con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers who have fall­en out of favour with the Gov­ern­ment, in any way, from be­ing added to the list of pre-qual­i­fied con­trac­tors and sup­pli­ers. That was right­ly red-flagged in Wednes­day’s ed­i­to­r­i­al as giv­ing a min­is­ter of fi­nance the abil­i­ty to use the in­el­i­gi­bil­i­ty list to pun­ish op­po­nents of a rul­ing par­ty and re­ward its friends and fi­nanciers.

Thank­ful­ly, good sense pre­vailed in the Gov­ern­ment.

It is note­wor­thy that at the com­mit­tee stage of the de­lib­er­a­tions on the amend­ments on Wednes­day night, Mr Im­bert said: “We have sought to ad­just the orig­i­nal word­ing of clause 5 to al­low it to be done on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Of­fice or in con­sul­ta­tion with the Of­fice ... ” This is a small but sub­stan­tial change from the orig­i­nal amend­ment.

Mr Im­bert al­so made con­ces­sions on clause 3, tak­ing away a min­is­ter of fi­nance’s ab­solute dis­cre­tion to add to the ex­empt ser­vices and now re­quir­ing ex­emp­tions based on the rec­om­men­da­tion of the Of­fice or, on the min­is­ter’s ini­tia­tive, af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with the Of­fice.

In ex­plain­ing the ad­just­ment to clause 3, Mr Im­bert said, “What we are do­ing here is that we as a Gov­ern­ment are un­der­stand­ing the con­cerns that have been ven­ti­lat­ed in the so­ci­ety by rea­son­able peo­ple.”

It ap­pears the Gov­ern­ment lis­tened to this news­pa­per’s ad­vice to tread care­ful­ly, as it could eas­i­ly have used its ma­jor­i­ty in Par­lia­ment to get its way.