Per­haps, it is on­ly in this coun­try that one gov­ern­ment can cre­ate an as­set, on one hun­dred acres of land for high­er ed­u­ca­tion, and an­oth­er gov­ern­ment would aban­don it as if it had no val­ue at all. The de­te­ri­o­ra­tion over the time of aban­don­ment would have been an ad­di­tion­al cost to the tax­pay­er and a di­min­ish­ing of what was in­tend­ed to be a na­tion­al as­set. If such an as­set be­longed to you, would you let it lan­guish and de­te­ri­o­rate for ten years? I am talk­ing about the Debe fa­cil­i­ty which was sup­posed to be a south­ern cam­pus for the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies.

On­ly in this coun­try per­haps, would a gov­ern­ment build a state-of-the-art hos­pi­tal for chil­dren and adults and then a suc­ceed­ing gov­ern­ment would aban­don it as if it had no val­ue for six years. On­ly to find that it could be use­ful dur­ing the COVID cri­sis be­cause there was more than am­ple space, beds and qual­i­ty fa­cil­i­ties for hos­pi­tal care. If Grena­da, Bar­ba­dos or St Lu­cia had an as­set such as that, do you not think that they would put it to the best pos­si­ble use? I am talk­ing about the Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal in Cou­va.

Maybe stu­pid things have hap­pened in oth­er coun­tries. But even if that is so, it should not hap­pen here.

If a gov­ern­ment re­spects the tax­pay­er, cit­i­zen and vot­er, that gov­ern­ment would not be­have with such cal­lous dis­re­gard to­ward their tax­pay­ing dol­lars and the as­sets cre­at­ed by such ex­pen­di­ture.

Would the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar Gov­ern­ment be jus­ti­fied in bring­ing cit­i­zen as­sets cre­at­ed dur­ing their ear­li­er tenure (2010-2015), such as the Debe Cam­pus and the Cou­va health fa­cil­i­ty, to fruition? What could pos­si­bly be the ob­jec­tion to see­ing these as­sets ful­fil their pur­pose? Why should the gov­ern­ment not have a point of view?

It may be that the as­sets were un­fin­ished and need more work. I won’t know the de­tails, but won’t it cost you more to leave the as­sets to rot than to fin­ish them and bring them in­to use?

Why would UWI not sit with a gov­ern­ment to work out how such as­sets could be used to ben­e­fit the na­tion­al and re­gion­al pop­u­la­tion, the na­tion in which the cam­pus re­sides and the re­gion the UWI is meant to serve, de­vel­op and sus­tain? In any case, the fun­ders of na­tion­al cam­pus­es of the re­gion­al uni­ver­si­ty, are dom­i­nant­ly na­tion­al gov­ern­ments. Na­tion­al gov­ern­ments make na­tion­al pol­i­cy, and one would ex­pect a uni­ver­si­ty cam­pus would want to sup­port its host gov­ern­ment by align­ing some of its pro­grammes to sup­port na­tion­al ob­jec­tives in spe­cif­ic ar­eas, as they do in Ja­maica and Bar­ba­dos.

The uni­ver­si­ty is au­tonomous but not in­de­pen­dent. With gov­ern­ments as its prin­ci­pal fun­ders and key stake­hold­ers, it has to be per­pet­u­al­ly po­lit­i­cal­ly as­tute. Po­lit­i­cal as­tute­ness re­quires UWI to be in a po­si­tion to have an open en­gage­ment with gov­ern­ment on any­thing that mer­its dis­cus­sion. UWI should en­joy a po­si­tion where gov­ern­ments are will­ing to have an open-door pol­i­cy to­ward the uni­ver­si­ty and where UWI, in turn, has a work­ing re­la­tion­ship with re­gion­al gov­ern­ments.

Gov­ern­ments sit on the uni­ver­si­ty coun­cil. Prime min­is­ters at­tend coun­cil some­times, ed­u­ca­tion min­is­ters, on oc­ca­sion, at­tend Fi­nance and Gen­er­al Pur­pos­es Com­mit­tee meet­ings. So, the uni­ver­si­ty is not in­su­lat­ed from pol­i­tics at all.

Host gov­ern­ments of­ten have in­flu­ence on who be­comes cam­pus prin­ci­pal and the chan­cel­lor is a po­lit­i­cal ap­point­ment in broad terms.

But in their re­la­tion­ship with each oth­er, both politi­cians and uni­ver­si­ty of­fi­cials need to ho­n­our bound­aries. It is not de­sir­able that the uni­ver­si­ty be par­ti­san, as the uni­ver­si­ty has be­come from time to time. Politi­cians should al­so not be telling the uni­ver­si­ty what to do and how to do it. How­ev­er, it is le­git­i­mate for the gov­ern­ment of any coun­try to make de­mands on the re­gion­al uni­ver­si­ty and for a na­tion­al gov­ern­ment with a UWI cam­pus to make de­mands of it in terms of pol­i­cy align­ment or on be­half of the needs of its cit­i­zens.

But UWI should have the op­por­tu­ni­ty to present their point of view to gov­ern­ment and al­so, lis­ten to gov­ern­ment’s con­cep­tion and ob­jec­tives for the Debe cam­pus and show flex­i­bil­i­ty and re­spon­sive­ness and of­fer so­lu­tions. So let every­one have their say and in the end, gov­ern­ment will make a de­ci­sion and take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to fund its suc­cess. So, gov­ern­ment is like­ly to have its way. The fact that UWI is so de­pen­dent on gov­ern­ment fi­nanc­ing makes it weak. It may be that UWI will have to find means to be more cre­ative, re­source­ful, en­tre­pre­neur­ial and strate­gic with a dif­fer­ent busi­ness mod­el.

How­ev­er, T&T and the re­gion come out win­ners in what is a sim­ple mat­ter to re­solve. It is not rock­et sci­ence at all. Let’s do some­thing right.