TRINI ONE

It seems amazing to us that even as crime grips the land, as school violence escalates, as the price of rice and flour, two basic essentials, increases and many have no idea where the next meal is coming from, Prime Minister Manning should even be considering a private jet.  Are we rich or not?

Mr Manning, apparently not satisfied with his grand plan to shift the PM’s office from Whitehall to the Red House, has now had yet another seeming ‘vaps’, that of a private jet which with him in it would fly off like Air Force One to wherever he wishes. Good thing for us, his meeting with Mr Bush, the US President only lasted five minutes. What other trappings of office would he have wished for, a military helicopter on the lawn of his house? According to his argument the jet is to allow him to fly in and out of Trinidad and Tobago on official business without the bother of the length of his time out of the country being determined by such mundane things as commercial airline schedules.

He revealed at Thursday’s post Cabinet Press Conference, that CARICOM leaders had been discussing having an executive jet facility put at their disposal, and that at least one CARICOM leader used executive jets to commute within the region. If we imagine that this jet, estimated to cost millions would be subsidised by CARICOM we can think again.  For if we were inclined to betting, we would wager that more than likely most of them were thinking that a portion of Trinidad and Tobago’s relative windfall from crude and natural gas would have to be set aside to purchase the ‘exclusive jet facility’ to be put at their disposal. It would be like BWIA all over again, being used by all but paid for by Trinidad and Tobago.

The TT Prime Minister, clearly to further advance his argument for a private Prime Ministerial jet, pointed out to members of the media at the Press Conference that when he travelled to Jamaica recently he had to leave on Friday and return on Sunday morning. He added that with an executive jet he could easily have left on Friday afternoon and returned the following day. While being away for an additional day from the country may appear to Prime Minister Manning as an excellent reason for his Office having a private jet, we are certain that many taxpayers, who do not know where their next meal is coming from, much less flown in a jet, even to Tobago, may disagree with him. Was Manning’s apparently recent thinking of an executive jet — the CARICOM leaders’ thoughts aside a whim, or was it triggered by his having travelled by Repsol jet and the furore it caused? Is the Prime Minister suggesting that such an expensive additional trapping of Office is really worth it, or indeed really necessary?

The tens of millions of dollars that would have to be used for the purchase, fuelling, upkeep of and security for an executive jet for the Prime Minister’s Office, along with the hundreds of millions that would have to be set aside for the construction of a new building to house Parliament, could be better expended on additional school places and hospital beds, as well as specialist programmes on vocational training and skills development. What signals are our leaders, and this includes CARICOM leaders, sending to the nation’s and the region’s young, for whom, many of them, the collective priority would simply be to obtain meaningful employment and perhaps be able to purchase a bicycle should they live far from the work place.