If for­mer Trinidad Pe­tro­le­um Hold­ings Com­pa­ny (TPHC's) chair­man Wil­fred Es­pinet had a dol­lar every time some­one de­mand­ed his res­ig­na­tion dur­ing his tur­bu­lent two-year tenure, his net worth may have been high­er than es­ti­mat­ed.

By yes­ter­day calls had mor­phed in­to de­c­la­ra­tions of vin­di­ca­tion on his re­moval by Gov­ern­ment. Still, there may be is­sues re­gard­ing his re­place­ments on Petrotrin suc­ces­sor com­pa­ny boards—at­tor­ney Michael Quam­i­na and HDC chair­man New­man George.

Quam­i­na who meets TPHC's man­age­ment on Mon­day, was at­tor­ney for Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley (re­gard­ing "US bank ac­count" al­le­ga­tions), Camille Robin­son-Reg­is (bank with­draw­al is­sues), Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald (writ­ing the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion on sta­tus of in­ves­ti­ga­tions), Team Row­ley (in 2018 PNM elec­tions), the Works Min­istry (on Curepe In­ter­change is­sues).

In De­cem­ber 2015 PNM's Max­ie Cuffie de­scribed George as Row­ley's "friend" (sic) and as­sis­tant cam­paign man­ag­er for the 2015 polls.

For Es­pinet, how­ev­er, du­ties as Gov­ern­ment's "front­man" for Petrotrin's re­struc­tur­ing have end­ed, days shy of a year af­ter the Au­gust 28, 2018, date when Es­pinet con­firmed 1,700 Petrotrin work­ers would be re­trenched—first of the vary­ing fig­ures.

He'd have ap­peared to pos­sess the nec­es­sary busi­ness savvy and strength to han­dle rerout­ing an en­trenched seg­ment of the na­tion­al econ­o­my, con­fronting Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union on it and sev­er­ing the main­stay of al­most 10,000 work­ers.

Turns out Es­pinet's much-tout­ed pri­vate sec­tor busi­ness ap­proach didn't ad­e­quate­ly out­fit him for be­ing hatch­et­man re­gard­ing T&T's largest pub­lic-sec­tor en­er­gy com­pa­ny—a cen­tu­ry-old in­sti­tu­tion to which gen­er­a­tions had emo­tion­al ties and whose fu­ture was a ma­jor po­lit­i­cal is­sue.

Han­dler help was in­sert­ed in­to what be­came na­tion­al de­bate af­ter Es­pinet's helms­man­ship. To some, how­ev­er, his sig­na­ture state­ment re­mains, "All! All! All...! re­gard­ing num­bers be­ing re­trenched. In Oc­to­ber 2018 he was muz­zled by Petrotrin lawyers af­ter crit­i­cis­ing the In­dus­tri­al Court. Whether liv­ing abroad prop­er­ly as­sist­ed him in un­der­stand­ing how the clo­sure af­fect­ed cit­i­zens, he did the job as he saw fit, giv­en the man­date for a prof­itable en­ti­ty.

That Gov­ern­ment had to en­ter the process re­peat­ed­ly to clar­i­fy is­sues—in­clud­ing when his state­ments con­tra­dict­ed theirs—is as much part of Es­pinet's his­to­ry, as is OW­TU's con­tempt for his work.

Af­ter an Au­gust 2018 meet­ing with Petrotrin's board, OW­TU's An­cel Ro­get warned "...(We'll) take away the jobs of the PNM Gov­ern­ment...and that's not a threat old man, that's a promise.”

While Im­bert and Khan praised Es­pinet's re­struc­tur­ing, their state­ments al­so sig­nalled Her­itage isn't on par re­gard­ing pro­duc­tion and staffing. Speak­ing loud­est was Im­bert's ar­gu­ment against ail­ing Her­itage CEO Mike Wylie's re­ten­tion while he con­tin­ued can­cer treat­ment in the US for the next six months—a po­si­tion Es­pinet de­fend­ed.

While Khan and Im­bert ini­tial­ly seemed at odds on whether there'd be a tem­po­rary re­place­ment for Wylie (Khan's state­ment) or per­ma­nent one (Im­bert's quick cor­rec­tion), Khan didn't dis­agree.

Wylie who ar­rived on Au­gust 2018, was on the job up to June be­fore go­ing over­seas—ten months in­to his three-year con­tract. With his (US)$450,000 an­nu­al salary plus hous­ing, trans­porta­tion and health perks, con­sid­er­a­tion of his ex­it pack­age may in­clude whether he was in­ca­pable of ful­fill­ing the con­tract. It re­mains ahead whether he'll be paid for the part and whether Gov­ern­ment pays his US med­ical bills. His fam­i­ly who re­lo­cat­ed from Texas last year re­turned with him.

This, af­ter high hopes for Wylie's in­ter­ven­tion. In a 2018 Sun­day Guardian in­ter­view with this writer (his first), Wylie said he em­pathised with Petrotrin work­ers since he'd watched his par­ents strug­gle af­ter los­ing oil in­dus­try jobs in the 1980s. He'd de­tailed how the Petrotrin ex­plo­ration/pro­duc­tion job he'd ap­plied for mor­phed in­to Es­pinet's of­fer to head Her­itage, and his big plans.

Un­can­ni­ly, Wylie al­so said, "My in­ter­est was to come here and do some­thing mean­ing­ful to­wards the end of my ca­reer. This isn't a three-year as­sign­ment, this is a job—this is my last job..."

The Es­pinet ex­pe­ri­ence has re­vealed the chal­lenges of op­er­at­ing Gov­ern­ment's state en­ter­pris­es as busi­ness­es, along­side po­lit­i­cal con­cerns—as­pects which don't al­ways mesh—and the se­lec­tion of boards which can han­dle both counts. If not fi­nessed, while busi­ness­men like Es­pinet have some­thing to re­turn to af­ter pub­lic ser­vice, gov­ern­ments will have to strive dou­bly to re­turn.

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