Searching for the race bogeyman

The Minister of Finance quite recently provided in the House of Representatives in response to a question on the order paper a detailed listing of the names and occupations of all members of the boards of directors of all state enterprises and statutory authorities. There is abundant speculation that the motivation for the question was of course race, an opportunity for the parliamentary opposition to demonstrate to their supporters that East Indians were being victimised and discriminated against by not being appointed to governance positions on these boards. Others hold a very different view, more political than racial in nature. They are convinced that the overwhelming majority of appointees to these state entities are members or at least known supporters of the ruling party. In an attempt to validate this position, a feature writer in a daily paper went through the Minister’s list with a fine tooth comb searching for names of known PNM supporters, members and activists and for his troubles came up with no more than between ten or 15 known PNMites among the approximately 400 names provided by the Minister.

Mr Abdulah, a columnist in this newspaper, takes the view that Boards should be insulated from party politics, with directors being appointed on the basis of nominations by civil society — trade unions, business, women and youth organisations. These civil society appointees would then according to the columnist, develop the particular institution's policies based on their perception of the long term welfare of the nation rather than on the short term agenda of the supposedly 'uncivil' party comprising the national executive. Readers considering this novel approach should reflect very carefully on the nerve-racking trauma to which this nation’s banking and financial sectors were subject during the UTC, Central Bank, Ministry of Finance fiasco. One can only imagine the frequency and the severity of the shocks to the financial system should each and every public sector financial institution seek to formulate and operate its policies without regard to and even in defiance of the Central Bank and the Ministry of Finance. It is difficult in this scenario to contemplate anything other than a complete collapse of the banking and financial system as we know it. Where health is concerned there can be under this revolutionary dispensation no national health policy, no harmonisation of medical protocols and procedures. Each regional health authority will establish its own unique health policy and pursue what it perceives to be the national interest and welfare. Neither the Minister of Health nor the Government could under this regime be held responsible for the delivery of health care to the people of TT.

In fact the government will not be responsible for a whole host of services including health, housing, water, electricity, transport, telecommunications, airport and seaport operations, and tourism just to name a few. It would be interesting in this brave new world to see what an election manifesto would contain — that is assuming that there will still be elections. The columnist is not unaware of the diminished responsibility of traditional Government under these new arrangements for as he tells it the Boards, not Ministers of Government, would be required to account directly to a restructured parliament. But the information provided by the Minister offers the opportunity to test the accuracy of the perceptions prevailing relating to the criteria applied when Boards are appointed. Of the 44 state organisations listed in the Minister’s handout, only information from the first 12 in the list will be looked at. The following taken from a public document laid in the Parliament and distributed to all media houses are the names of the Chairmen of these 12 organisations — Mr Jerry Hospedales, Mr Asgar Ali, Mr Uthara Rao, Ms Patricia Butcher, Mr Clary Benn, Mr Ken Gordon, Mr Ian Rajack, Ms Wendy Ann Lee Yuen, Mr Ulric Warner, Mr Krishna Ramkumar, Miss Elizabeth Raphael, and Mr Ronald Nurse.

It would be difficult given these names to sustain a contention that persons of East Indian descent are discriminated against when the chairmanship of the most prestigious appointment to a board is being determined. A review of the names of the 93 persons comprising the 12 boards reveals a minimum of 30 percent to be persons of East Indian descent. Small wonder then that the opposition has not found any use for the document.

Also, quite impossible to sustain, is the contention that membership in or active support for the PNM is a necessary prerequisite for appointment to a board. All that appears to be necessary is a conviction on the part of the executive that persons being appointed are competent and are prepared to carry out the policies of the Government. In so far as competence is concerned it is to be noted that an overwhelming majority of the 93 persons comprising the twelve boards considered posses tertiary education with the major professions  — law, accounting, human resource management, industrial relations, economics, engineering, information technology etc being generously represented.
 
There is therefore no evidence that the Government is constrained by race in its choice of individuals to serve on Boards and save for the obvious, its political adversaries, neither is it constrained by political affiliation. It appears therefore that it is making reasonably good use of the human resource bank nationally available even to the point where your distinguished columnist, notwithstanding his objection to the present system has very kindly agreed to accept appointment to serve on a Board.