Tax­pay­ers are owed an ex­pla­na­tion of the ap­point­ment yes­ter­day of busi­ness­man and po­lit­i­cal fi­nancier Ra­bindra Moo­nan as chair­man of the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (HDC), just weeks af­ter he was re­moved as head of the board of Caribbean Air­lines (CAL) in very con­tro­ver­sial cir­cum­stances.The ex­pla­na­tion of­fered by the HDC's line min­is­ter, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, has not been suf­fi­cient to shake off the jobs-for-the-boys cloud that has hung over this ap­point­ment ever since it was first hint­ed at a few weeks ago.Cer­tain­ly, there seems to be a ma­jor dis­con­nect be­tween this de­ci­sion by Dr Mooni­lal and that of his Cab­i­net col­league Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai, who sacked Mr Moo­nan and oth­ers from the CAL board.The glar­ing ques­tions are these: What makes a man who presided over CAL dur­ing a pe­ri­od of fi­nan­cial fail­ure and con­tro­ver­sial board ac­tiv­i­ty the best choice to now take the helm at the HDC? What is there about his track record and qual­i­fi­ca­tions and puts him so far ahead of any­one else that he should be giv­en charge of the state agency re­spon­si­ble for hous­ing?

At the very least, there must be a good ex­pla­na­tion of how the Gov­ern­ment could, in the face of strong ob­jec­tions from sev­er­al quar­ters, ap­point some­one it just fired for over­see­ing mal­ad­min­is­tra­tion at CAL to an­oth­er board with an even big­ger re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, giv­en the high de­mand for hous­ing.The T&T pub­lic is aware of dis­turb­ing de­tails of Mr Moo­nan's con­tro­ver­sial 11-month stint as CAL chair­man. To date, he has not been ex­on­er­at­ed of any of the charges that led to the ax­ing of that board. They were ex­posed for mak­ing sev­er­al poor de­ci­sions and tak­ing ad­van­tage of seem­ing­ly loose op­er­at­ing pro­ce­dures at the cash-strapped car­ri­er.Un­der Mr Moo­nan's watch, CAL deputy chair­man Mo­han Jaikaran re­quest­ed 19 com­pli­men­ta­ry air­line tick­ets for Moth­er's Day con­certs he was pro­mot­ing in New York and Toron­to. There had al­so been a num­ber of re­quests for pas­sen­gers to be up­grad­ed from econ­o­my to first class, all at the ex­pense of T&T's tax­pay­ers–and on an air­line that record­ed a loss of $339.5 mil­lion last year.

When he axed the Moo­nan-led CAL board, Mr Howai cit­ed is­sues of bad cor­po­rate gov­er­nance.How­ev­er, in jus­ti­fy­ing Mr Moo­nan's new board as­sign­ment, Dr Mooni­lal claimed Mr Howai is new to the po­lit­i­cal process and had re­moved the CAL di­rec­tors with­out pri­or Cab­i­net ap­proval.How­ev­er, Mr Howai's de­ci­sion has not been re­scind­ed, so Gov­ern­ment must say whether or not it was hap­py with Mr Moo­nan's tenure at CAL. If they were sat­is­fied with his per­for­mance as chair­man of the air­line, they would need to ex­plain why he was re­moved from CAL.If, how­ev­er, Mr Moo­nan was prop­er­ly re­moved from CAL for poor per­for­mance, they must now jus­ti­fy his place­ment as HDC chair­man and demon­strate that there was prop­er scruti­ny of this ap­point­ment to a pub­lic en­ti­ty where he will over­see the ex­pen­di­ture of mil­lions of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars.