Commentary by Reginald Dumas, former TT and UN diplomat

Over the years I have often written and spoken about what I am satisfied is an unrelenting assault on our fundamental institutions by Patrick Manning-led administrations. In truth, it isn't so much the administrations as Manning himself, to whom, in an article I wrote last November, I gave "full marks for consistency and tenacity in his pursuit of one-man preeminence." Many see the appointment of a Cabinet of new and untried arrivants as a further step along that road. I suspect Ken Valley and Keith Rowley and Knowlson Gift might agree.

By "institutions" I don't mean only the formal structures like the judiciary, Parliament and the Service Commissions. I mean also the standards of perception and conduct necessary for civilised societal living. I mean too the cumulative effect on those standards of the messages sent to the population by government and quasi-government action, as well as the lessons drawn-and, I expect, intended to be drawn-from those messages.

For instance, when, in a society deemed secular, the PM makes constant public Biblical references, wears his born-again Christianity on his sleeve, and neglects the Trinity Cross issue, what is he saying? When he takes his oath of office in Woodford Square as distinct from any other public place, and sees no problem in wearing his balisierparty tie while on government business, what is he telling us? When Caribbean Airlines, a state-owned company, puts the same balisier on the tail of a CA plane, what are we to assume?

It was the CEO of CA, Phillip Saunders, who made the announcement. "It is part of the new Caribbean personality series of designs called 'Caribbean Flava'," he is reported as saying, sounding rather like an ice-cream salesman, I thought. The balisier was included "simply because it is beautiful," he added; there was no political significance involved. It's possible Saunders convinced himself that his "explanation" made sense. Maybe it did, but it quite defeated my meagre intellect.

Another CA official, François Pariseau, was quoted as insisting that the balisier would not be removed: it had been printed in CA's notebooks in January without complaint from anyone, he went on, and the matter was being blown out of proportion. His tone gave me the impression he thought he was putting a bunch of unruly schoolchildren in their place. As with Saunders, I could only wave feebly as his argumentation passed me by.

You can excuse these just-come foreigners; they must do what they must do to preserve their no doubt healthy compensation packages. (I hope that the Minister of Finance, who claims the government is fully committed to transparency and accountability, will soon tell us what those packages are.) What really disturbed me was the reaction of some government Ministers.

Neil Parsanlal strangely asked if companies could be categorised as pro-UNC if they used a version of the rising sun. I wonder what he would say if Petrotrin started doing just that next Monday morning.

Stanford Callender said he didn't care what was painted on the plane; he was interested only in the service provided. I have to conclude from this that an Hitlerian swastika or an image of Osama bin Laden would leave him totally unfazed. Good for him.

And Joseph Ross said that it was CA's decision, "and if they felt they could put that, so be it." Everyone was free to think as he liked, the Minister assured us, and, after all, CA "was a private company". It clearly didn't bother Ross that CA hadn't merely thought, it had acted, and that (he should ask Conrad Enill about this) the cessation of BWIA's flight operations and the start-up of CA had cost the T&T taxpayer $2 billion. Some "private company".

Could Ross tell us who owns CA? When are these owners going to see any accounts of its first year of operation? What role did the CA board play in the choice of this contentious symbol? And now that a decision (inspired by whom, I wonder) has been taken to remove it, I notice that Saunders says that CA's about-turn is by no means an about-turn, and that Parsanlal continues to make strange statements. I can't wait to hear from Ross and Callender.

Larry Ousman had a letter in the Express of February 29 which we should all (and people like Parsanlal in particular) read and digest. "The balisier on the plane's tail will not change some mindsets," he wrote. "It will, however, rub salt in the wounds of others (and) add to the very real 'we/them' and 'we time now' concepts. No good can come of that. It will continue to divide It is necessary that the Government represent all of (the) country (The) issue is (not just about) a beautiful flower or an artistically pleasing logo. It is about a principle, representation and awareness."

Exactly.

This commentary appeared in the Trinidad Express, March 07, 2008

Reginald Dumas is a retired former International diplomat.