AN ECONOMY CLASS GOVERNMENT

The BWEE airbus had climbed through the grey mist covering St Lucia and had almost reached its proposed flying altitude when I steupsed. The steups wasn’t a long, ear or air-splitting utterance; it belonged more to the family of steupses, which through their very brevity, communicated that a person’s annoyance was accompanied by a certain degree of acceptance of the perversity of life. It was the first time I had made this peculiarly TT sound in a month. I had not expected a steups before touching native soil, not after having crossed the Atlantic Ocean without a hiccup. The premature eruption had not been provoked by poor piloting or inferior cabin service. The bright video screens were the source of my vexation cum resignation, or rather their image was, for on them was the rotund face of one of our many ministers in the Finance Ministry, Kenneth Valley. Who, in my position, wouldn’t have been slightly peeved? I had gone from watching a light movie starring Julia Roberts to a tedious feature on BWEE’s new
Latin American flights with Valley as the leading man. I felt like I was losing altitude fast.

Could BWEE not have produced a video that was less colonial, less provincial, particularly in this age of media marvels and particularly given that a destination such as Costa Rica had to be an easy sale? The airline’s passengers had paid enough for their tickets and thus, should have been guaranteed interesting, amusing in-flight entertainment. The Valley piece had too much of a 1970’s Ministry of Information documentary air to it. To be fair to BWEE’s staff though, they must have just been following governmental orders when they slid the Valley video in; they hadn’t really been trying to torture passengers into flying with the competition. And to be equally fair to Valley, I would have steupsed had any of his Cabinet colleagues appeared on the screen: recently, I was becoming easily queasy at the sight of most politicians. I became particularly nauseous when politicos began speaking because they always promised a first class service of champagne and caviar and the sole benefits TT frequent flyers got for their votes were an economy class pack of peanuts and a tepid soft drink.

To me, Valley’s Government was little different from others before it. While the PNM’s retrospective vigilance of the nation’s coffers was all well and good, the country needed and deserved genuine attempts, here and now, to uproot the causes of corruption, even if these meant the PNM sending in one of its CEPEP crews to do the job. TT’s citizens merited leaders who were keen cultivators of a permanent environment of accountability and transparency in government and I knew that somewhere under these grey Caribbean clouds, the present TT administration was not tilling or toiling as it should be. The PNM was instead, tossing the seeds of clarity and responsibility into the sky, so its citizens might feel these were landing on fertile ground. But where were the signs that the PNM was growing a country that sincerely believed in integrity? As Valley spoke about his Government’s “flight” plans, I could not forget that Parliament had not yet approved the forms necessary for the implementation of the 2000 Integrity in Public Life Act or that the Act had not been amended to make declarations retroactive for the years 1999, 2000, 2001, 2002 and 2003. The PNM had substituted action with a merry-go-round of reasons for not listing their assets and liabilities. The saga of the non-implementation of legislation so crucial to the very ideals of transparency and accountability in public life was more serpentine than a Latin American soap opera.

TT’s citizens had been told that the declaration forms necessary for the execution of the Act were being reviewed by the AG; that the Integrity Commission was too weak; that the PNM was drafting anti-corruption legislation. Then finally the PM had spilled the actual beans: many in his regime felt the Act’s breadth was “too wide.” Manning’s announcement left Trinidad and Tobago flapping its “honest” wings futilely, yet he still expected the country to believe he could fly it to his PNM destination, a faraway, developed land called 2020. The PM also wanted those on his flight of fancy to trust that the nation would eventually touch down in 2020 because he and Opposition Leader were reportedly discussing the Integrity Act “while they talked about other matters concerning constitutional reform.” All carefree voyagers should beware that while the two men chatted, no one in public life had to file a single declaration for yesteryear or the years before that. The Integrity Act was conveniently left in a holding pattern and therefore, so was the country’s political and social development. The PNM was also neglecting a second and perhaps arguably, more important method of fostering long term transparency and accountability: campaign contribution reform.

Although rules limiting donations to candidates were in place, parties secretly received large sums of money and accepted many favours from unknown companies and persons. Successful contenders thus, entered government more indebted to the wealthy and influential than to electors. Democracy belonged to only those who could afford its high price. Yet, never did this Government’s representatives miss an opportunity while abroad to sing a song of transparency, accountability and integrity. At last June’s Extractive Industries Transparency Initiative (EITI) Conference in London, another of Mr Manning’s Finance Ministers, Christine Sahadeo had boasted: “Madame Chair, the issues of transparency and accountability in public life are the tenets by which my Government is guided. It is therefore a stated goal of my Government that it considers integrity in public life to be one of the basic fundamentals for all holders of public office. All persons appointed to public office and even those from the private sector who have been selected to serve on Boards and committees of Government are chosen with these considerations in mind.”

What Sahadeo had not shared with ‘‘Madame Chair,’’ was that she and her Cabinet colleagues had not declared a cent of their money, or lack thereof; that at home, TT’s citizens were being told that the “scope of the Act was too wide;” and that if forced to list their assets and liabilities, at least according to Sahadeo’s Prime Minister, many State Board members might resign. She had not said that her Government did not even want to hear about campaign finance reform. Reading Sahadeo’s EITI speech had made me steups more than watching Valley’s dreary video had, because at least, BWEE really did have flights to Costa Rica. It seemed to me, from where I was sitting in economy class, that though the PNM might know the way to San Jose, it didn’t have a clue how to set TT on a steady course to “developing nation status.” 2020 was nothing more than a Manning Mirage.