Diplo­ma­cy in al­most any set­ting re­quires tact-skill and sen­si­tiv­i­ty in deal­ing with oth­ers or with dif­fi­cult mat­ters-as well as the abil­i­ty to han­dle a range of is­sues in a non-con­fronta­tion­al, po­lite man­ner. None of those qual­i­ties can be found in the speech de­liv­ered by this coun­try's Am­bas­sador and Per­ma­nent Rep­re­sen­ta­tive to the Unit­ed Na­tions in Gene­va, Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis, at a con­fer­ence on cul­tur­al diplo­ma­cy last month. A 37-minute YouTube video of the am­bas­sador's speech cur­rent­ly be­ing cir­cu­lat­ed on so­cial net­work sites and by e-mail fea­tures her very con­tro­ver­sial opin­ions de­liv­ered at a cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty con­fer­ence host­ed by the In­ter­na­tion­al Con­fer­ence Cen­tre of Gene­va. Very lit­tle of what Ms Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis said was even re­mote­ly con­nect­ed to cul­tur­al di­ver­si­ty. Her re­marks about be­ing fired as Health Min­is­ter be­cause she dared to crit­i­cise doc­tors, and that she "taught the cur­rent Prime Min­is­ter" at uni­ver­si­ty were the most undiplo­mat­ic of com­ments, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the set­ting in which they were de­liv­ered. Speak­ing large­ly off script, Ms Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis re­vealed that she met her hus­band over the In­ter­net, talked about her sis­ter's fer­til­i­ty and even de­scribed how she was asked to take up the Health Min­istry port­fo­lio in a 4.30 am phone call from Ms Per­sad-Bisses­sar hours be­fore she was sworn in.

Ms Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis is no mi­nor of­fi­cial but an am­bas­sador to Gene­va, a world­wide cen­tre for diplo­ma­cy, where she is ex­pect­ed to play a crit­i­cal role in ad­vanc­ing the coun­try's in­ter­ests and in­flu­ence. This is an im­por­tant as­sign­ment, since Ms Bap­tiste- Cor­nelis is ac­cred­it­ed to sev­er­al in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions based in Gene­va, Rome, Vi­en­na, Paris and Berne, in­clud­ing the World Health Or­gan­i­sa­tion, In­ter­na­tion­al Labour Or­gan­i­sa­tion, Food and Agri­cul­ture Or­gan­i­sa­tion and the In­ter­na­tion­al Atom­ic En­er­gy Agency. Ms Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis, whose aca­d­e­m­ic qual­i­fi­ca­tions are in man­age­ment, math­e­mat­ics and com­put­er sci­ence, at­tract­ed her fair share of con­tro­ver­sy dur­ing a stint as Health Min­is­ter from May 2010 to June 2011. It was short­ly af­ter be­ing fired from that job that she was of­fered the over­seas post­ing. Ms Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis' in­ap­pro­pri­ate ap­proach might have gone un­re­marked had it not been for the so­cial me­dia. The crit­i­cism of her per­for­mance is, among oth­er things, a use­ful re­minder to all pub­lic of­fi­cials over­seas that their words and ac­tions can now be mon­i­tored by the pop­u­la­tion they are rep­re­sent­ing thou­sands of miles away.

Those sent on diplo­mat­ic as­sign­ments are ex­pect­ed to bring ben­e­fits to the coun­try, en­sur­ing that a pos­i­tive in­ter­na­tion­al im­age is main­tained at all times, par­tic­u­lar­ly in sit­u­a­tions where bu­reau­cra­cy, pub­lic re­la­tions and pol­i­tics may over­lap. Ms Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis has at her dis­pos­al well-qual­i­fied staff at the em­bassy whose as­sis­tance she should have ac­cept­ed in prepar­ing her pre­sen­ta­tion for the con­fer­ence. In­stead, she de­cid­ed to ad lib and the re­sults were dis­as­trous. Ms Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis is one of sev­er­al po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees head­ing T&T mis­sions over­seas. In fact, the trend has been to of­fer such ap­point­ments to for­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ters when they are fired from the Cab­i­net. This un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion may al­so pro­vide a use­ful op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­flect on the pre­vail­ing prac­tice of shuf­fling off un­sat­is­fac­to­ry or un­want­ed po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees with a com­fort­able diplo­mat­ic sinecure. In the age of com­mu­ni­ca­tion, out of sight is no longer out of mind. Fur­ther­more, un­sat­is­fac­to­ry per­for­mances in the Par­lia­ment or in oth­er po­lit­i­cal are­nas are not like­ly to be in­stan­ta­neous­ly trans­formed in­to stel­lar diplo­mat­ic skills sim­ply by the act of be­stow­ing such post­ings on po­lit­i­cal ap­pointees. Some diplo­mat­ic post­ings re­quire years of ex­pe­ri­ence and tech­ni­cal knowl­edge and are best re­served for ca­reer diplo­mats who have the ben­e­fit of years of train­ing.