Giv­en the high stakes that were rid­ing on it, Fri­day's de­ci­sion by the Gov­ern­ment to con­cede to the de­mands of the Op­po­si­tion to hold a joint se­lect com­mit­tee meet­ing to analyse the Tax In­for­ma­tion Ex­change Agree­ments bill is most wel­come.

That bill is the cru­cial piece of the jig­saw puz­zle that could even­tu­al­ly lead to T&T ful­fill­ing its com­mit­ment to the US gov­ern­ment to pass the leg­is­la­tion that paves the way for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the For­eign Ac­count Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA).

While the gov­ern­ment is to be con­grat­u­lat­ed for its con­ces­sion, some se­ri­ous ques­tions still need to be asked with re­gard to the think­ing that dri­ves the peo­ple who lead this coun­try at this time of in­creas­ing eco­nom­ic, so­cial and in­dus­tri­al re­la­tions prob­lems.

Cer­tain things are clear with re­gard to the FAT­CA leg­is­la­tion:

n It re­quires a spe­cial three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty in both hous­es of par­lia­ment be­cause the Tax In­for­ma­tion Ex­change Agree­ments bill con­tains claus­es that are in­con­sis­tent with the fun­da­men­tal rights and free­doms guar­an­teed by sec­tions 4 and 5 of the Con­sti­tu­tion of T&T;

n The Gov­ern­ment does not now have a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty in ei­ther leg­is­la­ture. That means pas­sage of the leg­is­la­tion re­quires the co­op­er­a­tion of the op­po­si­tion in the low­er house and the co­op­er­a­tion of three non-gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tors;

n Back in Sep­tem­ber, the Op­po­si­tion made it clear that its sup­port was con­tin­gent on the Gov­ern­ment agree­ing to a joint se­lect com­mit­tee.

Against that back­ground–and giv­en the im­por­tance to the coun­try's bank­ing and pay­ment sys­tems–clear­ly the speech Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert de­liv­ered on Fri­day should have been de­liv­ered four months ago.

Even if he con­sid­ered that the Op­po­si­tion's de­mands amount­ed to black­mail and hold­ing the coun­try to ran­som, Mr Im­bert should have been very clear in his mind that the leg­is­la­tion needs the sup­port of the "oth­er side" to be passed.

That cal­cu­la­tion alone should have in­di­cat­ed to him that that was one bat­tle that he was not go­ing to win, no mat­ter how much he huffed and puffed and threat­ened to blow down the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress's house–wher­ev­er it is now lo­cat­ed now.

In the cir­cum­stances, a gra­cious con­ces­sion to the Op­po­si­tion's de­mands four months ago would have saved T&T from the histri­on­ics and brinkman­ship that cer­tain­ly do not be­come a po­lit­i­cal par­ty that has gov­erned T&T for as many years as the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment or a fi­nance min­is­ter with as much par­lia­men­tary ex­pe­ri­ence as Mr Im­bert.

One of dan­gers of brinkman­ship is that some­times peo­ple fall off the edge. And while Mr Im­bert was smart enough to pull the coun­try back from the edge in the FAT­CA mat­ter, it seems the Gov­ern­ment wants to take the coun­try back to the brink with re­gard to the Petrotrin strike.

With just hours to go be­fore thou­sands of work­ers down tools at the Petrotrin re­fin­ery, the Gov­ern­ment has made no at­tempt to take the is­sue of the first col­lec­tive agree­ment pe­ri­od (2011 to 2015) out of the In­dus­tri­al Court.

In­stead gov­ern­ment spokes­men have stuck stub­born­ly to the script that the sec­ond pe­ri­od (2015 to 2018) can­not be set­tled un­less and un­til the In­dus­tri­al Court has set the bench­mark with a judg­ment for the ear­li­er pe­ri­od.

While say­ing that the is­sue is best left with the In­dus­tri­al Court may seem like a clever ar­gu­ment, clear­ly log­ic dic­tates that an out-of-court of­fer be­fore the strike gets start­ed would save the coun­try a great deal of stress.

The les­son from FAT­CA is that it is bet­ter to con­cede a weak hand ear­ly in a way that seems like a ne­go­ti­a­tion rather than a con­ces­sion, rather than con­tin­u­ing to hold on to the hand and be­ing forced to con­cede.