Ever since the appointment of the board of directors of Caribbean Airlines (CAL) in November 2010, the leadership tier of the airline has been turbulent with controversy. Within the first month of the board taking office, it had managed to run afoul of its line Minister Jack Warner over the scheduled purchase of aircraft and abrupt dismissal of the company's Chief Executive, Captain Ian Brunton. Warner then called for the board to resign. Fast forward over the reconciliations and rocky engagements of the board and the Minister of Works and Transport and in May 2011, we find the situation to be virtually unchanged, Minister Warner having recently written to Attorney General Anand Ramlogan asking that he do "whatever it takes" to disband the board of directors of Caribbean Airlines.
In the Sunday Guardian, surprising revelations about contractual arrangements, and poorly supported payments suggest an environment in which due process was ignored or at best, given lip service, in these reports of the management style of Chairman George Nicholas and his board. The most critical fallout of this executive impasse is the apparent inability of CAL's Board of Directors to conclude the arrangements to formally merge the operations of Caribbean Airlines and Air Jamaica after the board was formally placed in suspension by Warner in March. The board may simply not have the authority to conclude this critical item of business in that state. That state of affairs is simply unacceptable in an enterprise that is as mercurial and challenging as 21st century air transportation.
Caribbean Airlines was charged, on its formation, with reversing a situation, many decades old, of almost continuous financial losses by the national air carrier. Buoyed by an advantageous fuel subsidy and leaner staffing, CAL initially presented a marginally improved business profile over its predecessor, BWIA, but in a climate of robust competition and more focused market profiling, the airline is now tasked with making faster decisions, responding more intelligently to emerging trends and building a competitive culture that might enable it to function in today's volatile air transportation market. It's hard to imagine how the company has any hope of doing that with a board that proved almost immediately to have challenges in discharging its functions and liaising with its ministerial oversight.
Now the board is essentially nonfunctional at exactly the point when it needs to be thinking clearly and competitively about its merger with Air Jamaica and its role and business profile in regional and international air travel markets. The Government must show more spirit in making a decision about this board at this critical juncture and that decision must acknowledge that it is the ultimate steward of the significant expenditure from the public purse that relaunched Caribbean Airlines and continues to keep it running when profitability falters. That taxpayer investment alone demands quick, decisive action to reconcile the expectations of the public, the quite public frustrations of the Minister of Works and Transport and the critical juncture at which the airline finds itself now.
In confronting this challenging situation, the Government must further be clear that it is responsible for managing the success of the quasi-corporate businesses it operates on behalf of the people of Trinidad and Tobago and that such management must be executed in the public interest with appropriate accountability and transparency. There is no room in such circumstances for financial self-interest and dodgy family business arrangements that attempt to circumvent public sector standards for disclosure with attempts at influence peddling. There should be no need to remind the Cabinet that the People's Partnership Government came to power on a platform that championed public accountability and rejected that costly political shortcuts of the previous administration. By their own words, this Government has held itself to a higher standard; by its actions, it must demonstrate a commitment to that standard.