Pao­lo Ker­na­han

Can you imag­ine what it must be like dri­ving a Porsche Cay-enne? The in­te­ri­or of this em­bod­i­ment of op­u­lence must be dead qui­et, like trav­el­ling in a sen­so­ry de­pri­va­tion cham­ber. The air-con­di­tion­ing unit on lev­el two could freeze an 11-pound leg ham; the chilled leather seats ca­ress your beslacked but­tocks as your right foot ten­ta­tive­ly calls on the mon­ster be­neath the hood. Now I've seen the As­ton Mar­tin in Trinidad, even the Bent­ley, high­ly favoured by mega sports ath­letes the world over. Those sight­ings are rare though; the Porsche Cayenne is now the gold stan­dard of ob­scene wealth in this coun­try. There are just enough of them on the road to let you know that there are some fan­tas­ti­cal­ly wealthy busi­ness­men in this coun­try who are set­ting the bar for mim­ic­ry very high. Af­ter all, even the ubiq­ui­tous so­ca star nowa­days can af­ford the Range Rover.

The Op­po­si­tion and dis­af­fect­ed PNM sup­port­ers seized up­on the ac­qui­si­tion of the Porsche Cay-enne by the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture as a cause c&ea­cute;lèbre, easy prey re­al­ly. Dr Kei­th Row­ley spoke of the im­pro­pri­ety of the pur­chase. Con­verse­ly, the Min­is­ter of Trade and In­dus­try, Stephen Cadiz, re­buked the me­dia for fo­cus­ing on the lux­u­ry ve­hi­cle, de­rid­ing the at­ten­tion as dam­ag­ing dis­trac­tion. The Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, a Cayenne-er him­self, at­tempt­ed to stave off grow­ing dis­sent over the mat­ter as the me­dia nat­u­ral­ly at­tached both ac­qui­si­tions for max­i­mum im­pact. In the late stages of the game, Emanuel George re­vealed that his pur­chase of the Porsche was not made with tax­pay­ers' mon­ey, this was his per­son­al ve­hi­cle. The dam­age was al­ready done, adding to the ar­mory of an­ti-gov­ern­ment ac­tivists who be­lieve that this is an­oth­er in a long line of egre­gious in­jus­tices per­pe­trat­ed against a trust­ing elec­torate.

I've been strug­gling to dis­pas­sion­ate­ly ex­am­ine both sides of the ar­gu­ment. In the grand scheme of things, the ex­pen­di­ture of just over $400,000 pales in com­par­i­son to the mil­lions haem­or­rhaged by the Gov­ern­ment on a month­ly ba­sis through in­ef­fi­cien­cies in pub­lic ad­min­is­tra­tion, de-lin­quent vat and bill col­lec­tions, and ham­pers stuffed with $15,000 for every cit­i­zen fac­ing a dis­as­ter of earth, wind and fire each week. A per­plexed Vas­ant Bharath puz­zled pub­licly over the brou-ha­ha, in­di­cat­ing that the word lux­u­ry is not ap­plic­a­ble here be­cause the ve­hi­cle was ac­quired at a cost of rough­ly $400,000. He de­scribed it as be­ing at the low­er range (though I am sure the low­est range of Porsche does not have "wind dong" win­dows). Let's look at the fig­ures. For less than or­di­nary civil­ians the Porsche diesel mod­el is es­ti­mat­ed at $1 mil­lion, the petrol mod­el starts at $1.3 mil­lion and for the re­al high rollers, the V8 gas guz­zling be­he­moth is $1.6 mil­lion.

Now none of this should mat­ter be­cause the ve­hi­cle was ac­quired through the min­istry and as such was ex­empt from vat and im­port du­ties. Had the min­istry gone with the Toy­ota Pra­do, a lux­u­ri­ous ve­hi­cle in its own right, the sav­ings would have been far greater giv­en that the price range of this four-wheel dri­ve ve­hi­cle is be­tween $600,000 and $700,000. Again, it could be ar­gued that quib­bling over a cou­ple hun­dred thou­sand dol­lars in the con­text of gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture is the cheap­est of po­lit­i­cal one-up­man­ship. My prob­lem with the ac­qui­si­tion is far more ob­vi­ous; the Porsche Cayenne is not, by de­f­i­n­i­tion, an off-road ve­hi­cle and as such would be se­vere­ly chal­lenged by the sort of rugged ter­rain we have here. I know be­cause I dri­ve through agri­cul­tur­al ac­cess roads all the time in pur­suit of my work and I can say with a fair de­gree of com­pe­tence that these paths scarce­ly meet the spec­i­fi­ca­tions of a "road."

That said, the min­istry's Porsche Cayenne is on­ly suit­able for black tie func­tions so in in­stances where the min­is­ter is re­quired to ex­am­ine pineap­ple pro- duc­tion in Corosan, Table­land or co­coa farm­ing in Gran Cou­va, an­oth­er ve­hi­cle will have to stand in. The Toy­ota Pra­do would ap­pear to be the ide­al mar­riage of com­fort and off-road prowess and would have cer­tain­ly been the prefer­able op­tion for the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture. There is al­so the "how it go look" fac­tor that can­not be ig­nored. There is a fair de­gree of po­lit­i­cal in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty that is ram­pant in this ad­min­is­tra­tion and sur­pris­ing­ly so, giv­en the num­ber of rea­son­ably in­tel­li­gent peo­ple com­pris­ing the Cab­i­net. Cer­tain­ly, equat­ing a Porsche with a Bom­bardier jet is an out­ra­geous stretch, but our minds needn't trav­el that far back to when the PNM first re­turned to pow­er. Not long af­ter suc­cess­ful MPs were hand­ed their min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios, there was a buy­ing spree of lux­u­ry ve­hi­cles. If I re­call cor­rect­ly, a fair bit of noise was gen­er­at­ed over the then Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter's pur­chase of a lux­u­ry SUV. Es­ther Le Gen­dre chose the Volk­swa­gen Touareg, which in those days was a big deal, but now it is just a fam­i­ly van. It was up­on the very same wave of dis­con­tent with the sta­tus quo that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship surfed in­to of­fice. Now re­porters and by ex­ten­sion the pop­u­la­tion are be­ing char­ac­terised by this Gov­ern­ment as churl­ish and mis­chie­vous.

The unions are bristling at the im­mov­able five per cent sup­pos­i­to­ry on of­fer from the Gov­ern­ment and in the face of seething an­i­mus, a Porsche rides in. Of course many of us can ap­pre­ci­ate the chasm be­tween re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture like pub­lic ser­vants' salaries and a one-time cash out­lay for this "playa" trans­porta­tion. On the ground, how­ev­er, where the over­worked and un­der­paid are ketchin' their re­spec­tive skins, they are not like­ly to see rea­son in the ar­gu­ments of the "un­der­worked and over­paid." The en­er­get­i­cal­ly stirred de­ba­cle re­mind­ed me of an oc­ca­sion I'd been as­signed to cov­er some typ­i­cal­ly so­porif­ic gov­ern­ment as­sign­ment (rib­bon cut­ting or tap open­ing or ba­by kissin'). It was with the Min­is­ter of Agri­cul­ture at the time, Trevor Su­dama. The min­is­ter ar­rived with the dri­ver as­signed to him ...in a yel­low Lancer GSR. This was the mod­el shaped like a box and it was quite small. Nev­er­the­less, the min­is­ter was seat­ed in the back as if he was in a Lin­coln Town Car. Now I laughed my be­hind off to see a min­is­ter of gov­ern­ment chauf­feur-dri­ven in the back of this tiny car, which had to have been his per­son­al whip. That im­age stayed with me though.

This I imag­ined was a man for whom the of­fice car­ried more mean­ing than its trap­pings. By next week, the Porsches will have passed from the di­ges­tion of our con­scious­ness and we will have our teeth clamped on to the next "scan­dal." Ul­ti­mate­ly, this was not re­al­ly about the ve­hi­cle, but a fer­vent ex­pres­sion of dis­ap­point­ment by the peo­ple. Yet again the change that was promised seems far more elu­sive than we could ever have imag­ined. A ready so­lu­tion for this storm in a teacup on a moun­tain made out of a mole­hill is this: Mr Bharath, if you want every­one to keep dey a-- kwart, paint the min­istry in­signia and let­ter­ing on the doors of the Porsche. It could be a Bugat­ti Vey­ron; ain't no­body flossin' with "Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture" in the paint scheme.