Tobago Wants Respect
By Hugo Maynard
There is a special kind of insult that only a State enterprise can deliver in Trinidad and Tobago. It is the insult of coming to the taxpayer with hat in hand, pockets empty, books cloudy, performance shaky, and management language polished like church shoes, only to suggest that the same citizens keeping you alive may now have to pay more for the privilege of being neglected.
That is where we are with Caribbean Airlines.
The latest reports say CAL is seeking a billion-dollar bailout, considering a fuel surcharge, reviewing low-revenue routes, and floating the possible removal of the subsidy on the Tobago airbridge.
And as if that were not enough to make the average citizen choke on breakfast, Tobago House of Assembly Chief Secretary Farley Augustine has now made the obvious point that should have been the starting point all along: if taxpayers are subsidising Caribbean Airlines, then CAL’s first duty should be to the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago.
One would think that sentence is too plain to require debate.
But this is Trinidad and Tobago, where plain truth must first fight its way through committees, board papers, ministerial vocabulary, and the national addiction to pretending that a crisis is merely a “review.”
Let us say it without powdering it up.
An airline that cannot stand on its own feet, cannot show the public clean audited accounts for years, and cannot maintain confidence without running back to the State for oxygen does not get to treat the domestic population as the easiest place to recover losses. That is not strategy. That is scavenging.
And Tobago, as usual, is being asked to stand politely while Port of Spain experiments with unfairness.
The airbridge is not a luxury item. It is not a courtesy. It is not some decorative route to be trimmed when accountants start sweating and board members begin talking in low voices.
It is the practical link binding one half of the country to the other. It carries workers, students, patients, families, court matters, funerals, businesspeople, public servants, and ordinary citizens trying to live in one country that too often behaves like two unequal territories forced into an awkward marriage.
That is why this matter is bigger than CAL.
The airline’s defenders will say fuel prices are rising. True. They will say global aviation is a difficult business. Also true. They will say the international climate is unstable, that war affects operating costs, that every carrier is under pressure. Fine. Nobody serious denies those things. But those explanations are accelerants, not causes. They are weather, not rot.
The rot is older.
The rot is that Caribbean Airlines has become one more national institution where the public is expected to finance illusion. The illusion of regional ambition without regional discipline. The illusion of service without transparency. The illusion of efficiency without accountability. The illusion of commercial logic bending obediently before political fear.
For years this country has wanted CAL to perform three contradictory jobs at once. We want it to be a competitive international airline. We want it to be a social bridge between Trinidad and Tobago. And we want it to be cheap enough that nobody gets too vex when buying a ticket. That is not a strategy. That is a bacchanal with wings.
Somebody must pay for the contradiction.
And because no government, red or yellow, has had the courage to level with the population, the burden is constantly pushed forward like an old fridge being dragged from one side of the room to the next. Rescue package. Refinancing. Rationalisation. Fleet adjustment. Network optimisation. Every few years the same corpse gets a fresh jacket and introduced again as though it has merely been “repositioned.”
Meanwhile, the public is meant to clap.
Farley Augustine deserves credit here not because he discovered some new principle, but because he has restated the one that the political class prefers to blur: if CAL is a public burden, then it must first satisfy a public duty. Tobago cannot be the first sacrifice every time the airline catches fever.
And let us be honest about the Tobago dimension, because that is where the national hypocrisy always starts to show its teeth.
A citizen in Trinidad can often access services, offices, appeals, appointments and opportunities with relative ease. A Tobagonian frequently has to factor in airfare, uncertainty, timing, accommodation, inconvenience and the familiar insult of being told, in effect, “Come to Trinidad if you want it sorted.” Then, after living under that built-in disadvantage for decades, Tobago is asked to calmly entertain the possibility that its essential transport link may be made less affordable in the name of airline efficiency.
Efficiency for whom?
Certainly not for the mother travelling for medical care. Certainly not for the worker trying to move between islands. Certainly not for the student, the public officer, the small businessman, the family member attending to a death or emergency. The efficiency being discussed here is not national efficiency. It is spreadsheet efficiency, the kind beloved by people who never feel the inconvenience they are pricing into other people’s lives.
That is why Augustine’s autonomy point lands with such force.
Because every time one of these episodes arises, Tobago is reminded that too many practical decisions affecting its daily life remain hostage to a mainland political culture that does not feel Tobago’s burden in its bones. Tobago knows what it costs to be dependent on systems designed elsewhere. Tobago knows what it means to have necessity treated like a negotiable expense. Tobago knows what it is to be told, repeatedly, that its fairness must wait until some committee, minister, board or budget grows a conscience.
That gets old.
And it should get old.
No mature republic should need to be constantly reminded that equality requires more than anthem and flag. It requires practical fairness. It requires systems built with the realities of both islands in mind. It requires honesty about what is a public service and what is a commercial enterprise. Above all, it requires the discipline to stop lying to the public.
That is the real scandal here.
Not only that CAL may be seeking relief, though that is serious. Not only that higher costs may be coming, though that will hurt. The deeper scandal is that we remain trapped in a national culture where hard truths are postponed until they return as insults. Years of weak governance, years of opacity, years of dancing around the numbers, and now the citizen is being invited to once again bear the pain in the name of keeping the show on the road.
No.
If the State wishes to subsidise an airbridge as a public necessity, then say so clearly and fund it honestly. If international travellers should pay more than residents, debate it openly. If CAL’s wider network is unsustainable, say which parts are vanity and which are vital. But stop asking the public to bankroll confusion while being lectured about prudence.
The country is tired of paying for performance.
CAL wants saving. Tobago wants respect. Citizens want honesty. And if this country had even a modest appetite for seriousness, that order would not be difficult to understand.
But here, too often, the basic truths arrive last.
