To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary Far­ley Au­gus­tine an­nounced on Mon­day that the As­sem­bly was now re­view­ing its de­ci­sion to ap­point Dr Win­ford James to the board of the Stud­ley Park En­ter­prise Lim­it­ed (SPEL), with a de­ci­sion ex­pect­ed to come by the end of the week.

In an­nounc­ing the de­ci­sion, the Chief Sec­re­tary was quick to note that the ac­tion was not prompt­ed by a be­lief Mr James was not well qual­i­fied for the po­si­tion but by the neg­a­tive pub­lic re­sponse to the ap­point­ment.

The THA Sec­re­tary’s own words on the mat­ter are crit­i­cal in this re­gard.

“One of the things we promised to do is to lis­ten, even to your crit­i­cisms and to cor­rect the things that you point out might be wrong. And though Dr James is ex­treme­ly well qual­i­fied, we have not­ed the con­cerns brought by a lot of peo­ple. So as a team, as an ex­ec­u­tive, we are re­view­ing the mat­ter,” Au­gus­tine said.

Hav­ing pre­vi­ous­ly de­fend­ed the ap­point­ment, how­ev­er, the THA Chief Sec­re­tary now finds him­self in an eth­i­cal and moral quandary to re­verse a de­ci­sion the As­sem­bly clear­ly found no is­sue ini­tial­ly and was on­ly prompt­ed to act up­on it based on what clear­ly was pub­lic prompt­ing.

But why should cit­i­zens have had to raise their voic­es to get ac­tion on some­thing that should not have oc­curred in the first place?

It is, in fact, un­ten­able that Di­vi­sion of In­fra­struc­ture, Quar­ries and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Sec­re­tary Trevor James would see it fit to ap­point Dr James, his broth­er, to a deputy chair­man­ship of a board un­der which he has di­rect purview. If this is not a clear con­flict of in­ter­est, per­ceived or oth­er­wise, we do not know what is. As qual­i­fied and ex­pe­ri­enced as Dr James is, there can have been no process in which the pub­lic would have felt com­fort­able that the de­ci­sion to ap­point him was a fair and eq­ui­table one due to his fa­mil­ial re­la­tion­ship with Trevor James. And what of a sce­nario in fu­ture where Dr James, if the sta­tus quo re­mains, is not per­form­ing as need be in lift­ing a strug­gling SPEL—would the pub­lic feel com­fort­able that Sec­re­tary James would hold his broth­er to ac­count for such and take the req­ui­site ac­tion need­ed?

Even more dis­turb­ing is that Dr James him­self, who has, as a po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst in the past es­poused a strong stance against nepo­tism and cor­rup­tion in po­lit­i­cal par­ties’ op­er­a­tions, has de­fend­ed the de­ci­sion. He has since in­di­cat­ed he will abide by any fi­nal THA de­ci­sion but clear­ly, al­so should not have ac­cept­ed the job based on good tenets of ethics or even po­lit­i­cal cor­rect­ness.

To­bag­o­ni­ans, af­ter all, gave the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots a re­sound­ing man­date with a 14-1 vic­to­ry in the THA elec­tions based, among oth­er things, on its cam­paign promise of bring­ing a fresh ap­proach to the is­land’s pol­i­tics, in­clud­ing a move away from a propen­si­ty of pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tions to dole out jobs for the boys and girls.

Need­less to say, we cer­tain­ly hope the PDP comes to a jus­ti­fi­able con­clu­sion at the end of this ex­er­cise and that the Chief Sec­re­tary’s promise is not mere­ly ma­m­aguism, since the pledge to ad­dress this clear wrong will be un­done by an in­sin­cere re­sult.