Express Editorial
March 14th 2009
Trinidad and Tobago News Blog
www.trinidadandtobagonews.com/blog
With the charges and countercharges and demands for resignation, we remind readers that the core of the matter is law and the rule of law. It is quite irrelevant that Ms Nunez-Tesheira may not see a conflict of interest in participating in a decision-making of the Government bailout of CLICO and CL Financial. Nor are the views of Prime Minister Manning and of Mr Duprey that there is no conflict of interest. Nor can we accept Minister Enill’s advice to consider the bigger picture.
With the obvious conflict, Minister Mariano Browne should properly have been point man, and the finance minister should have stood down from the relevant Cabinet discussions. Whatever individual parties may consider of their preferred definition of a conflict of interest, we remind all that there is the Integrity in Public Life Act 2000 which is the law of the land. And there is no ambiguity in the wording of the law and the normal processes to be followed.
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During the RIC hearings that subsequently resulted in the current electricity rate hike I made it abundantly clear that the net effect of the proposed unit rate increase from 15 cents to 35 cents per unit would result in a 45% hike in electricity bills. T&TEC and the RIC under Professor Dennis Pantin used every statistical trick in the book to deny and discredit this percentage increase.
It is patently clear to me that had not CL Financial magnate Lawrence Duprey made his pre-emptive approach to Government in mid-January to mobilize State injection of liquidity into his cash-strapped investment bank, CIB, CMMB and insurance giants CLICO and British American it would have been business as usual to date.
In countries where people often face persecution because of race, ethnicity, religion and a myriad of social constructs intended to divide and rule, I often wonder how many brilliant minds have never come to blossom. Historians bemoan the knowledge that was lost when unenlightened foreigners invaded ancient lands burning books and reducing to ash what had already been known about the universe and about our progress as a species.
January 24, 2009