Patrick Man­ning must be laugh­ing some­where.

“This ad­min­is­tra­tion was elect­ed to re­store in­tegri­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in pub­lic life…” said Dr Row­ley in his ad­dress to the na­tion on 29/12/15 set­ting the tone for his ad­min­is­tra­tion. That is what lead­ers do; they set the tim­ing, tone, and tem­po for the or­gan­i­sa­tions that they lead. And they lead by ex­am­ple.

We will nev­er know what tran­spired in the meet­ing be­tween the Prime Min­is­ter and Venezuela VP Del­cy Ro­driguez. How­ev­er, by con­firm­ing the au­then­tic­i­ty of the per­ma­nent sec­re­tary’s de­tailed in­struc­tions to the chief im­mi­gra­tion of­fi­cer, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter has al­so con­firmed that the com­po­si­tion of the en­tourage was known in ad­vance. Since Min­is­ter Young does not deal with “un­der­lings”, both he and Den­nis Moses, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter ought to have known that in­for­ma­tion. At best it is ev­i­dence of a mon­u­men­tal foul up jus­ti­fy­ing the Ex­press May 10 ed­i­to­r­i­al head­line “Alarm­ing laps­es at the top”.

Laps­es? The facts are un­sup­port­ive of the sto­ry­line that says the pur­pose of the meet­ing was to dis­cuss COVID-19. When pressed we are told that it was none of our busi­ness. Hard­ly an ex­am­ple of in­tegri­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Small won­der that the press has seized on the ship­ment of fu­el al­leged­ly “di­vert­ed” to Venezuela be­cause of the prox­im­i­ty of its oc­cur­rence to the meet­ing, and the as­ton­ish­ing­ly porous web of ex­pla­na­tions about said meet­ing.

The ex­pla­na­tion of Le Hunte’s res­ig­na­tion com­ing so soon af­ter these events are a vari­a­tion on a theme. The let­ter of res­ig­na­tion print­ed in the press speaks to a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion with re­spect to a Cab­i­net Note out­lin­ing a com­pre­hen­sive plan to achieve a 24/7 wa­ter sup­ply. F&GP is a cab­i­net sub­com­mit­tee used to fi­nesse and mas­sage com­pli­cat­ed notes in­to shape to achieve con­sen­sus. The note seems to have been fast tracked to cab­i­net with­out that lev­el of dis­cus­sion.

In the ver­sion told to Ria Taitt by a se­nior cab­i­net source (prime min­is­ter?) there was a heat­ed dis­cus­sion. Oth­er re­ports sug­gest that Le Hunte re­mained calm. The prime min­is­ter ob­ject­ed to the note based on the po­lit­i­cal im­pact of me­ter­ing with­out an ad­e­quate wa­ter sup­ply.

The fi­nance min­is­ter’s ob­jec­tions rest­ed on the fact that the ex­pense was not bud­get­ed and that the pan­dem­ic may re­quire ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture in­creas­ing bor­row­ing re­quire­ments cre­at­ing ad­di­tion­al risk ex­po­sure that could neg­a­tive­ly im­pact the coun­try’s in­ter­na­tion­al rat­ing. Re­al­ly?

The ex­pla­na­tions are du­plic­i­tous. First, fix­ing WASA is im­por­tant and was iden­ti­fied as a pri­or­i­ty in 2018 bud­get. Said Mr Im­bert, “the Wa­ter and Sewage Au­thor­i­ty (WASA), re­ceives an av­er­age an­nu­al sub­sidy of over $2 bil­lion a year to as­sist it in pay­ing salaries, ser­vic­ing debt, pay­ing sup­pli­ers, car­ry­ing out re­pairs and un­der­tak­ing its de­vel­op­ment projects. How­ev­er, de­spite such mas­sive fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from the State, WASA is fi­nan­cial­ly chal­lenged and strug­gles to pay its bills…dai­ly.”

Sec­ond, this kind of un­der­tak­ing can­not sim­ply re­volve around me­ter­ing. It must in­clude pres­sure man­age­ment, in­ter­con­nec­tiv­i­ty, de­mand man­age­ment is­sues and re­fur­bish­ment/ re­plac­ing of the ex­ist­ing pipeline in­fra­struc­ture which is es­ti­mat­ed to lose 40-50 per cent of the wa­ter it trans­ports. Me­ter­ing by it­self would en­cour­age end user ef­fi­cien­cy, but it could not pre­vent wa­ter loss.

Third, the me­ter­ing rec­om­men­da­tion is over 30 years old, dat­ing back to stud­ies com­plet­ed in the late 1980s and on­ly par­tial­ly im­ple­ment­ed. The Pt Lisas plants are me­tered and pay the full price of de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter in US dol­lars. Now that sev­en plants are closed or idled, that places ad­di­tion­al pres­sure on WASA (gov­ern­ment) which has a take or pay con­tract.

Fourth, a project of this na­ture fi­nanced by the IADB ( In­ter­Amer­i­can De­vel­op­ment Bank) would be sub­ject to strict pro­cure­ment guide­lines and a front end load­ing ap­proach ie that there would ro­bust plan­ning and de­sign up­front to avoid the dif­fi­cul­ties ex­em­pli­fied by the NGC waste­water pipeline.

Projects of this size, as well as the loan fi­nanc­ing, would be done in phas­es. Any bor­row­ing agreed to­day would be phased in over sev­er­al years as part of a cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture pro­gramme and in­clude a mora­to­ri­um.

The ob­jec­tions can be eas­i­ly ac­com­mo­dat­ed with­in these mech­a­nisms. How­ev­er, it is well known that Mr Im­bert has a strong aver­sion to mul­ti­lat­er­al pro­cure­ment guide­lines, and this may be the re­al cause of his ob­jec­tions which he cam­ou­flages as a drain on the coun­try’s fi­nances.

Mr. Im­bert is the equiv­a­lent of a “stop­per” in foot­ball. Ad­dress­ing NIB’s vi­a­bil­i­ty is avoid­ed. He has stalled the Pro­cure­ment Act, and ig­nored the Eco­nom­ic Ad­vi­so­ry Board lead­ing to its dis­so­lu­tion. The im­ple­men­ta­tion com­mit­tee failed at the gate. And the Com­mit­tee of 22? Le Hunte was sim­ply its first ca­su­al­ty.