The Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty of Trinidad and To­ba­go (TATT) and the Unit­ed States Fed­er­al Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Com­mis­sion (FCC) have signed a mem­o­ran­dum of un­der­stand­ing (MoU) aimed at strength­en­ing co­op­er­a­tion on telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions pol­i­cy and reg­u­la­tion.

First Cit­i­zens Hold­ings Ltd share­hold­ers yes­ter­day elect­ed two new di­rec­tors to the board of the ma­jor­i­ty state-owned bank at its an­nu­al meet­ing at the Hilton Trinidad, while ap­prov­ing the com­pa­ny's au­dit­ed fi­nan­cial state­ments and the reap­point­ment of au­di­tors.

En­dem­ic cor­rup­tion. En­dem­ic im­puni­ty. Emp­ty promis­es. There is no ac­count­abil­i­ty. There is a men­tal­i­ty that peo­ple can do what­ev­er they want, in­clud­ing mis­man­ag­ing and es­sen­tial­ly em­bez­zling pub­lic funds. Crit­i­cisms and ac­cu­sa­tions of fraud, mis­man­age­ment, and mis­ap­pro­pri­a­tion of funds have plagued lo­cal sports for years; ac­count­abil­i­ty cam­paigns de­mand­ing an­swers to the where­abouts of mil­lions of dol­lars go un­heed­ed and un­pun­ished. Cor­po­rate spon­sors have called for ac­count­abil­i­ty, and in the ab­sence of any se­ri­ous ef­fort to ad­dress their con­cerns, they sim­ply walk away. Lost in the cul­ture of “sweep it un­der the car­pet” and ride out the im­me­di­ate out­rage is the idea of “Pe­ter pay­ing for Paul.” Paul pays for all sce­nar­ios. The sport or­ga­ni­za­tions that are metic­u­lous about do­ing the right thing and prop­er­ly ac­count­ing pay the price. They strug­gle to get or re­tain spon­sors. Even at the lev­el of the Min­istry of Sport and Sport Com­pa­ny, the small fry car­ry the bur­den. The big guns ap­pear to get away with mur­der and still get fund­ing. The play­ing field is not lev­el.

High in Trinidad’s Cen­tral Range, the vil­lage of Los Ata­jos—Span­ish for “short­cut” — sits serene­ly along Bras­so Tamana Road, near Flana­gin Town.

It is un­for­tu­nate that not many of us who have fol­lowed in­te­gra­tion mat­ters over the years have been re­mind­ing re­gion­al lead­ers and pol­i­cy­mak­ers about the hol­low PR that ac­com­pa­nied the adop­tion of the Cari­com Char­ter of Civ­il So­ci­ety (CCS) al­most 30 years ago.