As the per­son cho­sen by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to man­age and guide the Trinidad and To­ba­go econ­o­my dur­ing a pe­ri­od of eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion and un­cer­tain­ty, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an's job is, with­out doubt, the most chal­leng­ing of any of the min­is­ters in the 11-month-old Cab­i­net. Al­ready in 11 months, Mr Dook­er­an has pre­sent­ed a bud­get in which a fis­cal deficit of $7.3 bil­lion was pre­dict­ed, ad­vanced a pro­pos­al to re­solve the Cli­co cri­sis that was both un­con­ven­tion­al and con­tro­ver­sial and seen off the bel­li­cos­i­ty of trade union­ist Wat­son Duke with the ar­gu­ment that the State can­not af­ford to pay its pub­lic ser­vants a salary in­crease of more than five per cent.It would be fair to say that in 11 months, Mr Dook­er­an has won some ar­gu­ments while los­ing oth­ers.

But when the Fi­nance Min­is­ter wrote a let­ter to the Prime Min­is­ter in which he ad­vised that the board of Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) should be "re­con­sti­tut­ed with per­sons with knowl­edge and com­pe­tence in the field," there are few who have ob­served the shenani­gans go­ing on at the air­line who would dis­agree with him that this board needs to be changed.In an as­ton­ish­ing­ly frank let­ter, which was made avail­able to this news­pa­per, Mr Dook­er­an said that the cur­rent board of CAL did not have knowl­edge or com­pe­tence in the is­sues per­tain­ing to air­line busi­ness and did not have any ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the is­sues of good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.These are in­ter­est­ing ob­ser­va­tions for a min­is­ter of fi­nance to make.

The ev­i­dence for the charge that the board has no ap­pre­ci­a­tion for is­sues of good cor­po­rate gov­er­nance can be found in the mis­han­dling of the dis­missal of CAL chief ex­ec­u­tive Cap­tain Ian Brun­ton, the fail­ure of the board to con­sult the line min­is­ter, and the in­de­ci­sion over the ac­qui­si­tion of the ATR air­craft. It seems, as well, as though the mem­bers of the board have ir­rec­on­cil­able dif­fer­ences which would pre­vent their prop­er func­tion­ing.

On the is­sue of the com­pe­tence of the CAL di­rec­tors, al­though it is note­wor­thy that the cur­rent CAL board con­tains no one with any­thing ap­proach­ing ex­per­tise in the air­line in­dus­try, that alone would not be enough to dis­qual­i­fy the board from ser­vice.The pre­vi­ous board, chaired by Neal & Massy and Guardian Hold­ings chair­man Arthur Lok Jack, did a per­fect­ly ad­e­quate job of pro­vid­ing stew­ard­ship over CAL from its es­tab­lish­ment in 2007; en­sur­ing that the air­line pro­vid­ed a su­pe­ri­or lev­el of ser­vice to its pre­de­ces­sor and ini­ti­at­ing the ac­qui­si­tion of Air Ja­maica.

That board did not have any­one with spe­cif­ic "knowl­edge or com­pe­tence in the is­sues per­tain­ing to air­line busi­ness," but it man­aged its busi­ness com­pe­tent­ly, kept its min­is­te­r­i­al over­seers in­formed and went about its busi­ness with­out much fan­fare-and cer­tain­ly with­out the an­tag­o­nism and in­fight­ing of the cur­rent board.It can be ar­gued, there­fore, that even in an in­dus­try as spe­cialised as avi­a­tion, it is pos­si­ble for a board to pro­vide the nec­es­sary stew­ard­ship with­out hav­ing spe­cif­ic in­dus­try ex­per­tise.

While, clear­ly, the cur­rent board of the air­line needs to be changed, there is no com­pelling ev­i­dence that pack­ing the board with re­tired air­line ex­ec­u­tives will achieve the de­sired lift-off for Caribbean Air­lines.A board with one re­tired air­line ex­pert, with the bal­ance be­ing ex­ec­u­tives with proven track records and spe­cif­ic ar­eas of com­pe­tence rel­e­vant to the air­line in­dus­try-such as law, en­gi­neer­ing, hu­man re­source man­age­ment- may be the ide­al for­mu­la for the air­line.Mr Dook­er­an is com­plete­ly cor­rect when he analy­ses that "the com­mer­cial stakes are high and the cost of po­lit­i­cal in­ac­tion will be high as well."Giv­en the fact that the ac­qui­si­tion of Air Ja­maica be­comes a for­mal­i­ty to­mor­row, there is no doubt that the cost of in­ac­tion in ap­point­ing a new board could be very high in­deed.