What was the TPDCo board thinking?

THE DIRECTORS of the Government’s Tourism Product Development Company (TPDCo) (or is it the tourism minister, Ed Bartlett) will probably get credit for the speed with which they reversed their appointment of Lionel Myrie as the agency’s interim CEO. It lasted only a day. So, Mr Myrie is back in his substantive post as TPDCo’s director of product development and community tourism.

But any assessment of this episode has to take into account an important and inescapable fact. That is, the board’s action to elevate Mr Myrie, even if only on a temporary basis, demonstrated poor judgement and thoughtlessness. And, certainly, the worse of the two.

Or put another way, the board was tone deaf to the concerns about matters of governance, especially with respect to the behaviour of public officials, as was exemplified by the TPDCo chairman, Ian Dear, in his remarks to this newspaper on the board’s change of mind. “... Once we identified that there was a potential

issue, we addressed it and we’re moving forward,” he said. It should not have required a public outcry, including the political Opposition hopping on to the bandwagon, for Mr Dear and his fellow governors to recognise that there would be a “potential issue” in naming Mr Myrie to act in the job. Even if they were told that it would be a good idea or were pressured to do so. Nine-day wonders are not always literally nine days. Memories sometimes extend to two years – and beyond.

First, it ought to be clear that the Myrie/TPDCo issue goes beyond whatever competence he may have possessed to serve as executive director for 30 days, until a new boss is found. It is a question of trust.

Mr Myrie’s name, it is recalled, was prominent in dispatches and bulletins two years ago. Mostly, it was not glowing. Reference was first made to him in a late 2018 report of an investigation by the auditor general into Petrojam, the government-owned oil refinery where managers, it seemed, spent taxpayers’ money like drunken sailors, including on surprise parties for the bosses at which top-line drinks and US$1,000, fourtiered, topsy-turvy chocolate cakes were apt to be served.

At the time, Mr Myrie was a director of the Petroleum Corporation of Jamaica (PCJ), the parent agency of Petrojam. He was also a self-described personal assistant to the then energy and technology minister, Andrew Wheatley. In the performance audit report, the auditor general referenced a J$10-million donation by Petrojam for the construction of classrooms at a St Catherine school, which did not abide by the company’s policies for approving and paying for such donations.

In another case, Petrojam agreed to a J$9-million donation to one St Catherine citizens’ association. It, however, cancelled the payment and granted a donation of the same amount, down to the cents, to another association, ostensibly on the recommendation of the first group.

Petrojam bosses told a parliamentary committee that in both cases, the requests were based on emails sent to the then Petrojam CEO by Mr Myrie. Mr Myrie insisted that he acted neither in his role as a PCJ board member nor as an aide to DrWheatley, who happens to represent a St Catherine constituency in Parliament. He was, at the time, also the portfolio minister for Petrojam and PCJ.

Mr Myrie said he was merely a“courier”, passing on a message from a St Catherine local government councillor. The councillor, unfortunately, could not speak to the matter. He was dead.

DID NOT COMMAND TRUST

Several of the issues related to the Petrojam scandal, however, are supposed to be subject of criminal investigations.There is no suggestion by this newspaper that Mr Myrie did anything illegal.

Nonetheless, the auditor general’s report and a subsequent investigation by the Integrity Commission painted a picture of Petrojam as a place politically connected people mistook for a feeding trough. Some, it seemed, forgot their fiduciary obligations.

While we take Mr Myrie at his word that he was a truthful witness at the parliamentary committee hearings, it is also the case that for some people he, in demeanour, appeared evasive rather than a witness of candour. He did not command trust.

That is the last, and perhaps lasting, image that many Jamaicans have of Mr Myrie – this sense, possibly unfairly, of a man dissembling. Which is what Mr Dear and the other good people on the TPDCo board should have understood when they were contemplating who should be named to act as the agency’s executive director.

In time, Mr Myrie may repair his image. Last week, his board did him no favours. And they came close to causing serious damage to the Government.