CURIOUSER AND CURIOUSER A DRAMA SCRIPTED FOR PUBLIC CONSUMPTION

Curiouser and Curiouser
A Drama Scripted for Public Consumption
Twenty-four hours after demoting Cabinet Minister Darryl Smith to the level of Junior Minister under his own new portfolio as Housing Minister, Prime Minister Rowley dismissed Smith from his new post.
By media release, the PM sought to explain his sudden change of heart claiming that “new information came to the attention of the Prime Minister” “during” ”a meeting between the Prime Minister, the Minister of Planning and Development, the Honourable Camille Robinson-Regis and Mr Smith”.
This record shortest Ministerial appointment sparked a wildfire of speculation among various active political figures and organisations, social media enthusiasts and the population generally and a flood of responses from PNM party and Government officials.
The PM’s release also announced that “The meeting (PM, Planning Minister and Smith) also resulted in the appointment of a committee to thoroughly review the circumstances surrounding the dismissal and payment of compensation to Ms Carrie-Ann Moreau at the Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs”.
The investigating committee was also named and stated that it is “…expected to report in two weeks”.
Finally, the release stated that the PM “anticipated that all parties involved in any non-disclosure arrangement in this matter will lift such impediment so as to allow the fullest examination of the facts for the benefit of the public”.
Every point in this release competes for the label of ‘most curious’. Let us examine them:
The April 10 meeting

• On April 5, the PM said he only knew about the compromised dismissal Trade Dispute the day before (April 4)
• The PM only met with Smith 5 days later and after moving him (Smith) as junior Minister to himself (PM) in another Ministry. Why?
• What was “new information” that came up at the meeting when Robinson-Regis had already investigated the matter, at the PM’s request?
• Was the new investigation committee only decided at the meeting or before that?

The Investigation Committee

• The PM’s release gives the mandate as reviewing ‘the circumstances” re “the dismissal and payment of compensation” to the dismissed worker. Why are the dismissal and compromise of the Trade Dispute being investigated by the PM after the fact?
• The AG is a named party in the Dispute and the PM’s Junior Minister is also the Junior Minister in the AG’s office, is the PM suggesting they settled the Dispute without even informing him? (sounds like the PM’s narrative on the OAS vote issue).
• If this investigating committee was decided out of the April 10 meeting, when were the members contacted and agreed to serve?
• If the “payment of compensation” is a subject of the investigation, is the role of the AG in the compromise of the Trade Dispute also to be included?

Erasing the Non-disclosure agreement

• The PM’s release ends “It is anticipated anticipated that all parties involved in any non-disclosure arrangement in this matter will lift such impediment…”.
• Who is anticipating what the aggrieved worker and her union will reverse course and ‘lift’ that agreement?
• On what basis is the PM expecting the worker and her union to do so?

All of this is a tale of the cart coming after the horse. Investigation after the case is already settled. The PM receiving decisive information after the case is already settled and after investigation report from a PM-appointed Minister.
There is much that is not told in the narrative of the PM’s release. There is more in this mortar than the pestle.  
All this against the backdrop of the PM’s failure to apply the principle of Ministerial individual responsibility to Smith and 3 other Ministers in the matters he addressed at the post-Cabinet media conference on April 5.
This script was authored as a smoke-and-mirrors plot, not for clarification and certainly not as an example of “what good governance is all about” as Robinson-Regis would have us believe.
The chorus who were trumpeting the virtues of Smith a week earlier and trying to convince us that the dismissal of Ms. Carrie-Ann Moreau had NOTHING to do with her complaints of sexual harassment are suddenly, magically now championing “a national policy on Sexual Harassment in the Workplace”. Just so?!
Once again, the body politic is taken for granted and a drama is acted out for our consumption while the real issues in the particular case are obfuscated and other front-burner issues of failed governance are also obscured by the curtain lowered to keep attention where the politicians-in-power wish to direct.
Just as there was a loud outcry on the transfer of the Sports Minister, the thinking Trinbagonians must be vigilant to ensure that this does not become another episode of sanitizing like the Seabridge fiasco, the OAS vote, the enrichment of another Minister and the mounting examples of a self-serving rule of the ‘sovereign’ PM and his Cabinet.
 
Clyde Weatherhead
A Citizen Fighting for
Democratic Renewal
Of our Society
11 April 2018

Note: Check my post of 9 April on the PM's post-Cabinet positions - Ministerial Non-Responsibility
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