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Tuesday, July 15, 2025

No apology from Imbert

by

20161106

His com­ments last week may have been deemed "flip­pant" or "face­tious" and cre­at­ed an out­burst of emo­tion among dif­fer­ent sec­tions of the pop­u­la­tion but do not ex­pect Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to is­sue an apol­o­gy.

Im­bert's per­son­al­i­ty is not built to give apolo­gies, said for­mer head of the Pub­lic Ser­vice, Regi­nald Du­mas.

"He will say he has noth­ing to apol­o­gise for."

When the Sun­day Guardian asked Im­bert if he would apol­o­gise for his com­ments, he did not an­swer yes or no but said, "As you can see, from your own news­pa­per re­port, the meet­ing went well yes­ter­day (Fri­day)."

On Fri­day, Im­bert met with the heads of trade unions and busi­ness groups. It was de­scribed as a pos­i­tive meet­ing. How­ev­er, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers' Union pres­i­dent Joseph Re­my was re­port­ed to have said, "We await the min­is­ter to do what is the right thing, which is ex­er­cise some lev­el of hu­mil­i­ty and ac­cept the fact that he mis-spoke and he made a mess out of what the sit­u­a­tion is."

Ac­cord­ing to the T&T Guardian, the unions and busi­ness groups were leav­ing room for Im­bert to re­tract his state­ments made at an In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund event last week.

The fol­low­ing was Im­bert's re­sponse when con­tact­ed via email yes­ter­day morn­ing.

SG: Good Morn­ing, Min­is­ter. I hope all is well. The unions have said they are wait­ing for you to re­tract your state­ments (Page 3 of the T&T Guardian). Will you do so? Will you make an apol­o­gy?

CI: As you can see, from your own news­pa­per re­port, the meet­ing went well yes­ter­day.

SG: The meet­ing may have gone well but will you is­sue an apol­o­gy, Min­is­ter?

CI: Re­fer to my pre­vi­ous re­sponse.

SG: I have. How­ev­er, I am ask­ing you if you will is­sue an apol­o­gy, Min­is­ter.

CI: Please re­fer to my pre­vi­ous re­sponse.

'He is who he is'

Du­mas said while Im­bert was in­tel­li­gent, hard­work­ing, and had vast knowl­edge of par­lia­men­tary pro­ce­dures, it was a ques­tion of how he ex­pressed him­self.

"He reads his pa­pers and he does his work...can't fault him on that, but it is re­al­ly a ques­tion of how he ex­press­es him­self," Du­mas said.

How­ev­er, he said Im­bert's per­son­al­i­ty, as seen over the decades, was one of es­sen­tial­ly "talk­ing down to peo­ple."

"It is who he is and I sus­pect he can't change. He was just be­ing Im­bert. He made a state­ment and thought it was fun­ny and for a lot of peo­ple it was not a joke."

Du­mas said there were pro­ce­dures to fol­low re­gard­ing wage ne­go­ti­a­tions, which were car­ried out by the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer.

He said it was for the CPO, act­ing on the min­is­ter's in­struc­tions, to say 0-0-0.

"It's not for you be­cause you are not ne­go­ti­at­ing with the unions. You in­struct the per­son who ne­go­ti­ates but it is not for you to get up and say this is where we stand."

This, he said, trig­gered an up­roar with the unions, and quite right­ly so be­cause there was a vi­o­la­tion of nor­mal ne­go­ti­at­ing pro­vi­sions.

How­ev­er, while he does not an­tic­i­pate ri­ots but per­haps a few march­es, Du­mas said the man­ner in which Im­bert spoke was in­sen­si­tive.

He said, "Im­bert has al­ways been a com­bat­ive fel­la. He likes to fight...that has been his per­son­al­i­ty. He is not tak­ing any fool­ish­ness from any­body...that's the kind of man he is but if it were some­one else, they might say for­get that, let's move on but Im­bert has to lash back."

How­ev­er, that caus­es prob­lems in pol­i­tics be­cause politi­cians are in the pub­lic do­main.

Asked if Im­bert should apol­o­gise, Du­mas said since min­is­ters on the whole do not like to apol­o­gise, it was hard­ly like­ly that he would.

"If you apol­o­gise it means you are wrong and you know min­is­ters are not sup­posed to be wrong."

About Colm Im­bert

* A Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for 25 years, win­ning his Diego Mar­tin North/East seat on eight con­sec­u­tive oc­ca­sions since 1991;

* Grad­u­at­ed from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies in 1979 with a bach­e­lor's de­gree in civ­il en­gi­neer­ing;

* Holds three Mas­ter's De­grees–Mar­itime Civ­il En­gi­neer­ing from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Man­ches­ter, UK; law de­gree in con­struc­tion law and ar­bi­tra­tion and oil and gas law, with a spe­cial­i­sa­tion in oil and gas tax­a­tion.[NOT CLEAR WHICH IS THE THIRD DE­GREE]

* Held the port­fo­lios of min­is­ter of lo­cal gov­ern­ment, health and ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion;

* Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives be­tween 2007 and 2010.


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