A normal interpretation
By Kevin Baldeosingh (T&T Express)
Mary King is an individual of impeccable ethics, superior intellect and absolutely fabulous hats. This is what the average or ordinary person has failed to appreciate in this whole contract-to-her-husband-and-son imbroglio.
It is true that the former planning minister did not declare any conflict of interest when her family's firm submitted a bid to re-create the Planning Ministry's website; but shouldn't we tip our hat to someone who's not interested in conflict? It is also true that King was present at the opening of the tenders; but she wasn't wearing her ministerial hat. It is even true that King appointed her personal assistant to the evaluation committee which chose her husband's firm for the $100,000 contract; but that doesn't mean she was passing the hat. And it is absolutely true that, if a common or garden person had done these things, it would have been a clear case of actions designed to gain a pecuniary advantage. But this is obviously not the case, prima facie or prima donna, for an accomplished individual like Mary King, who has a BSc in economics and is considered an expert in hat-buying.
Additionally, King is a former chairman of the Trinidad and Tobago chapter of Transparency International, whose present chairman, Richard Joseph, can be seen regularly on CNMG's morning show even though other individuals and groups have been blanking the State-owned station until its CEO, Ken Ali, is handed his hat for trying to skew the news. King resigned from the T&T Transparency Institute (TTTI) in 2002, when she was an independent senator during the 18-18 parliamentary deadlock, after questions were raised about whether the senators were justified in drawing salaries when Parliament wasn't sitting. Back then, Mary King declared, "I believe in the law," proving beyond any shadow of unreasonable doubt that she believes in the law. Even so, TTTI's board asked her to make a public statement about what she intended to do with her $8,520 monthly salary, which she refused to do, saying, "It is my personal, moral and spiritual business how I dispose of my legal property." Former prime minister Patrick Manning, you may recall, said something similar about his prophetess's $30 million church.
In a lesser or inferior individual, such a statement would have been an excuse to take money from the State while doing nothing, like a URP worker. But, nine years before she became Planning Minister, Mary King understood that doing nothing can be a virtue since, when Express investigative reporter Camini Marajh asked if she had declared her relationship to the winning firm, she responded, "I did nothing" in order not to bias the bidding process for or against her family's company. And every normal or everyday person would agree that virtue should be rewarded, perhaps by buying hats to talk through. Besides, King also told Marajh that she didn't even know her family was bidding for the contract: so King's husband clearly kept this little project under his hat. While such reticence would seem unlikely to persons with traditional or conventional families, remember that no less a personage than former prime minister Basdeo Panday was also unaware that CLICO head Lawrence Duprey had given his wife £100,000 for their daughters' scholarship fund.
If more proof were needed, Works and Transport Minister Jack Warner stated categorically on Monday that, "The Mary King I know is incorruptible": and everybody knows that nobody knows more about corruption than Jack. As a FIFA vice-president, Warner has been frequently accused of asking for bribes, but what lesser and poorer mortals fail to realise is that he has hardly ever been accused of taking them. And everyone who's not anyone knows that Jack Warner cannot be found to be corrupt, because Jack is a smart man.
It is therefore this tendency of the hoi polloi and hatless to criticise their betters and brighters which is undermining what TTTI board member Derren Joseph calls "this beautiful land". In 1998, United National Congress financier Steve Ferguson's two pitbulls killed rastafarian Christopher Charles and now, 13 years later as Ferguson is fighting to resist being extradited to the US to face trial for fraud related to the Piarco Airport project, businesswoman Vidya Emrith is facing criticism and calumny because her German Shepherds mauled a four-year-old boy. Don't the working-class or proletarian masses realise that, if we start blaming business people for valuing property over human life, what Joseph calls "our beloved country" runs the risk of economic and social collapse?
In similar fashion, it is clear that Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar did not think through her decision to fire Mary King, for who will advise her now on what hats to wear? Anil Roberts has thrown his hat in the ring for COP leader; Vasant Bharath has gone hat in hand to farmers; and Herbert Volney seems to be on familiar terms with the Mad Hatter. Maybe Kamla will pick a new adviser, such as Strategic Services Agency deputy director Julie Browne, out of a hat.
