Commonwealth Summits, one of which Trinidad and Tobago hosted in 2009, its golden year for summitry, are short, intensely busy affairs, held as the Malta one is over the last weekend in November, Friday to Sunday.
There are gala events, dinners and toasts, so the presence of Sharon Rowley is not, by itself, controversial. Indeed there is a Women’s Forum, at which participants are tasked with placing “women’s social and economic issues on the Commonwealth agenda,” and although the nature of Mrs Rowley’s participation has not been confirmed, it is the kind of summit sidebar in which leaders’ wives would be expected to participate.
Leaders get to meet the Queen and Prince Philip. In Edinburgh in 1997, journalists got to gawp at Nelson Mandela. PMs and presidents’ spouses and First Ladies (and First Gentlemen) have their place.
However, for a government that has spent a good part of its two months in office decrying unchecked spending by the opposition and promising to be more frugal, the optics are not good.
A Caribbean Airlines flight to London with a BA connection to Valletta, the Maltese capital, would cost over $29,000, first class.
The real question, though, surrounds the size of the delegation. Excluding the Rowleys, two security guards and an unspecified number of GISL reporters, there are eight others in the T&T team. The new Foreign and Caricom Affairs Minister is an automatic pick, as is the Acting High Commissioner to the UK.
Questionable would be the unnamed ambassador, protocol officer and a foreign service officer. A quick, very rough calculation based on the airfare, with the understanding that not everyone is flying first class and not everyone is starting out in T&T, would put the cost of air tickets alone at over a quarter of a million T&T$. The top hotels cost T&T$7,000 nightly. The total bill could easily rise to T&T$0.5m.
All this would raise questions about whether the new Government is walking the talk about being frugal.
Orin Gordon
Editor-in-Chief