Gail Alexan­der

Sev­er­al busi­ness lead­ers have praised out­go­ing UNC MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie for his work in the busi­ness field and one has blunt­ly lament­ed the way Tewarie was “kicked out” of the UNC can­di­date line­up.

Pe­nal-Debe Cham­ber Pres­i­dent Ram­per­sad Seer­aj said that was his per­son­al view.

On Sun­day the UNC an­nounced its can­di­dates for the Au­gust 10 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. Out of the 18 in­cum­bents, eight were re­tained.

Tewarie was among the 10 UNC in­cum­bents who were re­placed.

Yes­ter­day po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said he had not­ed many of the UNC’s can­di­dates were UNC Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive mem­bers.

“It’s peo­ple the leader knows and has worked with, mean­ing to­tal loy­al­ty,” he said.

Tewarie’s ex­ten­sive back­ground in­cludes as for­mer UWI Pro vice-chan­cel­lor, UWI Prin­ci­pal, found­ing di­rec­tor of UWI’s In­sti­tute of Crit­i­cal Think­ing and ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Arthur Lok Jack Grad­u­ate School of Busi­ness.

He was the NI­HERST chair­man fa­cil­i­tat­ing the cre­ation of COSTAATT and the foun­da­tion for es­tab­lish­ing T&T ‘s Ac­cred­i­ta­tion Agency.

He chaired the Na­tion­al Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Pol­i­cy Com­mit­tee for Vi­sion 2020. Tewarie served on the Board of the Caribbean Ex­am­i­na­tions Coun­cil, Trust Fund for the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice and has been a fea­ture speak­er in CARI­COM and oth­er re­gion­al fo­ra.

Apart from serv­ing on pri­vate sec­tor boards, he was al­so an MP and Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Plan­ning Min­is­ter.

His writ­ings in­clude books on VS Naipaul.

Pe­nal/Debe Cham­ber head Seer­aj said his per­son­al view was, “The par­ty and Op­po­si­tion Leader have done T&T and the Par­lia­ment a tremen­dous dis­ser­vice by not con­tin­u­ing with the ex­per­tise, re­source and tech­ni­cal and aca­d­e­m­ic skills of a per­son of the cal­i­bre and na­tion­al stand­ing of Bhoe Tewarie.”

“Whether the UNC en­ters Gov­ern­ment or re­mains in Op­po­si­tion it’s now de­void of his in­tel­lec­tu­al com­pe­tence and ca­pac­i­ty. He was one of the few peo­ple in the present Op­po­si­tion who would have been able to bring eco­nom­ic sense to the Par­lia­ment whether in Gov­ern­ment or Op­po­si­tion. The UNC aims to win Gov­ern­ment and for that of­fice you need strong peo­ple—es­pe­cial­ly now, you need peo­ple who can ar­tic­u­late the eco­nom­ic con­se­quences fac­ing us, peo­ple with the eco­nom­ic in­tel­lec­tu­al back­ground who can project and pre­scribe ac­cu­rate­ly.”

“The par­ty should have been able to prop­er­ly blend the ex­pe­ri­enced and new peo­ple with­out los­ing bal­ance and skill. As one of the few pro­fes­sion­als with a na­tion­al pro­file who’s ad­vanced the cause of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, he should al­so have been re­tained to en­sure peo­ple feel com­fort­able with UNC and don’t feel un­easy about lack of as­sur­ing faces.”

Seer­aj said if the plan was to bring Tewarie in af­ter the UNC won Gov­ern­ment—in some min­is­te­r­i­al or oth­er ca­pac­i­ty, “Why put him out of the pic­ture now ahead of an elec­tion when peo­ple will view him as be­ing dis­card­ed? If he has to be brought in lat­er, why wasn’t some­thing said now? The moves which have been made will make UNC lose votes. Peo­ple have been call­ing me since the an­nounce­ment, say­ing on elec­tion day they’re go­ing on a lime and won’t vote.”

To­ba­go Cham­ber pres­i­dent Di­ane Hadad said Tewarie had al­ways been some­one who was en­gag­ing and reach­able and at the end of the day the con­sid­er­a­tion “would be what lev­el of that, and tal­ent we are for­go­ing.”

“I wish him the best and look for­ward to work­ing with him in what­ev­er sphere he con­tin­ues to con­tribute,” she added.

Greater San Fer­nan­do Cham­ber head Ki­ran Singh said Tewarie seemed to have been a good rep­re­sen­ta­tive on the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty’s be­half. While there are al­ways changes with pol­i­tics he said the sit­u­a­tion al­so re­quires a mix of tal­ents in­clud­ing knowl­edge.

Since Tewarie was for­mer UWI prin­ci­pal, Singh said he’d have a wealth of knowl­edge on the econ­o­my and com­merce and may be missed in Par­lia­ment. He said it was ex­pect­ed UNC’s leader would have done due dili­gence choos­ing can­di­dates.

“But I won­der if those on the ex­ec­u­tive who may hold seats and are MPs, if it may not be too much work. Rep­re­sent­ing seats take time, as does par­ty work.”

San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion head Vivek Char­ran said busi­ness heads meet many min­is­ters and “there are some per­son­al­i­ties that stand out as peo­ple are com­mit­ted and quite knowl­edge­able. In the present Gov­ern­ment (Trade Min­is­ter) Paula Gopee-Scoon’s tried to be ac­ces­si­ble, a friend to busi­ness and to rep­re­sent as well as she can giv­en the cir­cum­stances.”

“In the pre­vi­ous Gov­ern­ment, there was Bhoe Tewarie, Kevin Ram­nar­ine and Vas­ant Bharath. They were al­ways ac­ces­si­ble to dis­cuss is­sues and we ap­pre­ci­at­ed it. I un­der­stand both po­lit­i­cal par­ties would seek to present new faces. While we un­der­stand that and we wel­come new faces we must al­so re­mem­ber, con­cern­ing busi­ness, it’s im­por­tant to have in­tel­lec­tu­al cap­i­tal and to have the peo­ple with the ex­pe­ri­ence. I hope both par­ties keep that in mind giv­en it seems every­one’s in­ter­est­ed in field­ing new faces.”

“Some­one like Dr Tewarie, wouldn’t have reached the end of his tenure— I think — and has still has a lot to of­fer and so do his two col­leagues,” Char­ran said, adding one had to ad­mire any­one as­pir­ing to gov­ern­ment, but still ac­ces­si­ble to peo­ple and busi­ness.

Con­struc­tion sec­tor stake­hold­er Mike Joseph said he didn’t re­mem­ber Tewarie mak­ing any ma­jor con­tri­bu­tion to that sec­tor when he was in the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment. He added that the Joint Con­sul­ta­tive Coun­cil had mat­ters then which are still be­fore the courts which Joseph felt could have been dealt with.

“So I don’t think the con­struc­tion sec­tor would have lost sig­nif­i­cant ex­pe­ri­ence, but Tewarie was a per­son who tried to looked at things ob­jec­tive­ly and have things worked out in best in­ter­ests of all con­sid­ered.”