BAD PRESS OR LACK OF TRUST What really derailed the Tobago Sandals project?
In a recent telephone conversation with another senior citizen like myself, with whom I have frequent state of the nation conversations I suggested, and he agreed with me that it was the absence of trust, more than anything else, that was responsible for the derailment of the Sandals Tobago project. It is true that not many people accepted the ‘bad press’ excuse advanced by Sandals. But apart from the usual finger pointing and expressions of disappointment or satisfaction, dependent on which side of the political divide the protagonists stood, neither the political analysts, academics, editors and letter writers attempted to deal with the most important characteristic of all successful win/win business deals —mutual trust between all parties.
In this case, Party 1 was Sandals – an international corporation. Party 2 was ALL the people of Trinidad and Tobago. Our various interests were supposed to be represented by the Cabinet, with the assistance of the executive of the Tobago House of Assembly, having at their disposal all the human and other resources of government. The people had no direct role in the negotiations, but it was our expectation that we would be reliably informed of the status of negotiations from time to time and that due consideration would be given to our views.
But what is TRUST? And is there a universally acceptable definition of the word. I did what people do in the age of the internet. I googled and selected four different dictionary definitions that seem to share a common characteristic. Here they are:
Merriam Webster Dictionary
Firm belief in the character, strength, or truth of someone or something
Oxford Dictionaries
Firm belief in the reliability, truth, or ability of someone or something. 'relations have to be built on trust' 'they have been able to win the trust of the others'
The Free Dictionary
Firm belief in the integrity, ability, or character of a person or thing;
Cambridge English Dictionary
t[T]o believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable:
The common criterion is “firm belief” or simply “to believe”
If we apply this CRITERION to the more than two years gestation before the Sandals project was aborted what do we find?
1. The government – Party 2 - apparently did not have the “firm belief” that a majority of its national constituency of varying interest groups including the National Parliament, the Tobago House of Assembly, other political parties, business organisations, trades unions and private citizens would have accepted and or objectively discussed/debated the secret non-binding terms of the signed Memorandum Of Understanding. This lack of a “Firm belief” led the government to stubbornly refuse to make the contents available to the publics on whose behalf it was supposed to be negotiating, until forced by the court.
The primary reason advanced for not releasing the document was that it was not binding. But this was the crucial point of the process at which trust was required. When it was eventually released the MOU was found to contain agreed conditions that many citizens and groups considered were not in the national interest. The Cabinet did not trust the citizens with the information and citizens responded in like manner. They did not have the firm belief that the cabinet would negotiate a deal that would be in the best national interest. This led to all sorts of rumours and conspiracy theories. discouraged many citizens and emboldened others to protest and oppose the project. Those suspicions were allowed to fester for months like inflammation on a wound. Negativity permeated the thinking of important sections of the population, negating the development of that state of “firm belief’ that ideally should be the hallmark of all major national public projects.
2. The size, cost, economic and environmental impacts on Tobago also required special careful consideration and direct intervention of the Tobago population. None of their concerns was openly addressed either by providing information or opportunities for discussion. Doubt developed into antagonism fueled by political division. The consensus and ‘firm belief’ that the project was in Tobago’s interest was never achieved. It was almost like the old American comic strip ‘What’s good for General Bullmoose is good for the USA. Or in Calypso language “If Sparrow say so is so.”
3. This is where my normal contrarian instincts take over. Since the announcement of the Sandals pull-out, I have imagined many times my bugging the decisive meeting of the Sandals Board Room at which Chairman Butch Stewart posed the final question to his team, until I dreamt about it a few nights ago. In my dream, I listened on my spy headset and observed the body language of the meeting on my monitor. A lot of the discussions were about increasing disagreements with Caribbean governments about tax. The meeting was about to be wound up. Chairman Butch speaks.
“OK. Last item on the agenda. This Tobago project is taking a very long time to negotiate. You have all read the reports. It has created a lot of political controversies and bad press for us, not only in Tobago and Trinidad but in America our biggest market, adding to the negative attention we have been getting from some of the other islands. We could get our PR team to work on the bad press. So that is not a big problem. We are a big company with a solid international reputation.
But you guys have had a lot of time to get to understand the Trini political situation. They have elections coming up, When 2020? If we were to go ahead and close this deal and the Rowley government is replaced, can we trust the new government to respect the contract and not attempt to cancel it?
Butch looks directly at his son who responds.
The truth is Chairman, we don’t believe that we could trust them.to respect any contract or even the MOU, if we don’t close the deal before the elections. The history of these post-election government changes is that several large significant contracts with big countries like England and China for instance, have been cancelled and even projects under construction have been abandoned.
Another pregnant pause, then Butch looks at the assembly around the board room table and asks. How much has this cost us so far. The CFO speaks. Very little. The MOU was drawn up by our internal legal department so there were no fees; just some travel and a lot of time. Butch closes the open file in front of him, stands and says — That’s it. Time to end this bullshitting. We have too many other projects and problems to continue to waste time on this. It was speculative in the first place. We would not have considered Tobago if we hadn’t been invited, or if we had to finance the project. Call it off. He turns to walk away, and his son asks. What do I tell Rowley? Looking across and without breaking a stride Butch responds, I don’t know. You come up with something. Tell him the bad press was ruining the Sandals international reputation and we couldn’t afford that. Make it convincing. Mention the report on American TV.
My 5:00 am alarm woke me up just as he reached the door.
And so, the sad story ended.
The government didn’t trust the people.
The people didn’t trust the government.
Political parties and activists didn’t trust each other
Political pundits and the media didn’t trust Sandals and/or the government
Lots of people didn’t trust Sandals
And Sandals didn’t trust the government and people of Trinidad and Tobago
What can we learn from this experience?
In a Letter to the press shortly after the news broke, I wrote:
SANDALS — A CASE STUDY IN A FAILED DEMOCRATIC PROCESS
“It should be OBJECTIVELY studied and analyzed by political parties, aspiring politicians, our institutions of higher learning, media, both traditional and new. There are lessons to be learnt. Because the most pressing development priority of our time is for us to find ways and means to involve all stakeholders and publics in objective deliberations about future projects, in the interest of building consensus about public decisions on major development projects.
We should be guided by two principles:
1. The democratic process in the 21st century demands from our politicians and managers much higher standards of communication, transparency and consultation than in the past. The new public is demanding a more active role in how their lives are managed.
2. There is a pressing need for neutral fora outside of the divisive political battlegrounds where the merits and demerits of projects could be debated, and the information shared with the public.
The impetus for what could be a fundamental change in our democratic processes cannot and will not come from the political parties, or from the current ‘political elites’, without inputs from the wider society.
Modern communications technology including the much misused and misunderstood New Media have an important role to play in this rapidly changing and volatile world.
But we should not make the mistake of thinking that this is evidence of a Trinbagonian weakness. In fact, we are in good company and we could even claim to be at the forefront of international change.”
It’s the way of the new world order. Check this most recent American experience.
On February 14, Valentine’s day, when America was celebrating the idea of LOVE, news broke that the mighty Amazon, one of the most powerful corporations in the world, led by the world’s current richest man – Jeff Bezos – announced “that it had cancelled its plans to build an expansive corporate campus in New York City after facing an unexpectedly fierce backlash from lawmakers, progressive activists and union leaders, who contended that a tech giant did not deserve nearly $3 billion in government incentives”.
Note that the deal was originally negotiated in secret as part of a bruising contest among American cities for attracting economic activity and JOBS. The same promise that the Government of Trinidad and Tobago kept dangling in front of the people to justify the Sandals project.
The missing ingredient and the great promise of democracy is still — TRUST - “to believe that someone is good and honest and will not harm you, or that something is safe and reliable: It is just as important to businesses and to governments as to our personal relations.”
Our political elites could continue to ignore this new reality at their peril.
Ends