Sunday, 31st August 2025
The Editor,
The April 2025 election of the UNC govt has triggered convulsions within State-controlled entities, with the replacement of Boards and Management being the main issues, most recently in the case of First Citizens’ Bank (FCB) in which the State is the majority shareholder.
The Finance Ministry is entirely within its legal rights to change the Boards of State-controlled entities, subject of course to compliance with the Central Bank’s ‘Fit & Proper’ rules and the requirements for an Extraordinary General Meeting.
That said, there are a few additional perspectives to consider, flowing from the PM’s outright, repeated declarations that the State is the majority shareholder in both FCB and Republic Bank Ltd –
- Republic Bank’s Board – We are witness to the sudden replacement of FCB’s CEO and its entire Board, so are we now therefore to expect that the Republic Financial Holdings’ CEO and Board is to be similarly, summarily replaced? If not, why not? This question was also posed by my erstwhile colleague and Business Guardian Editor, Anthony Wilson, on 28th August 2025 in ‘Is Republic Bank next?‘
- The Integrity Commission – Will all Officers and Directors of both those companies now be required to file declarations to the Integrity Commission?
- Changing/Replacing the Board – I agree with Mariano Browne’s recent comments that it is inadvisable and extremely rare for the entire board of a financial institution to be changed all at once, since that means complete loss of institutional memory.
Finally, I was concerned to note that the new appointee as incoming FCB Chairman is Mr Shankar Bidaisee, who was also recently appointed Chairman of UDECOTT. This is not in any way an attack on Mr Bidaisee’s competence, but the era of the ‘super-Chairman’ or ‘Czar’ should be placed firmly in the history books. Former PM, the late Patrick Manning, found such favour with Calder Hart that he was appointed to Chair the Boards of five State-controlled entities. Yes, five. We all should reflect on how that particular ‘concentration of power’ ended-up1. But that was in the ‘bad-old-days’, and we ought to have learned from those bitter experiences. There are enough high-quality, willing candidates to serve in those positions, even given the heavy demands of public office. That concentration of power is never a good thing, so it needs to be avoided.
Afra Raymond
afraraymond.net
- The impact of that benighted period was deep and adverse, climaxing in the Uff Enquiry which effectively unmasked Calder Hart such that he departed just before publication of that Report, never to return – two decisive extracts from Hart’s cross-examination are here for readers who want to see the pitiful depths to which racism and colonialism took us in the first decade of the new millennium, under a PNM administration. ↩︎
AfraRaymond.net 
These are all excellent points Afra.
Please let me know when you post this on LinkedIn as I am happy to support and endorse this call for care in state board appointments.
Kamla
Hi Kamla, this item is now posted on LinkedIn, so I am now awaiting your comments – thanks
Excellent as usual
Sent from Outlook for iOShttps://aka.ms/o0ukef
Thanks, Margaret, all of these issues are good feedstock for your upcoming Seminar, not so?
Afra’s matter-of-fact submission references our history of being colonised. The language distribution of Afrikans in our Diaspora reflects that morbid principle. French colonies speak only French, even in Afrika where communal languages are being eroded for Western ones and Chinese in Azania. Hindi and Yoruba struggle for air here like George Floyd. Again I see capitalism as the Devil’s sacred commandments to those who replace Grace with Greed, Leadership with Abuse and Peace with War. The folly of two-party dictatorships drowns each modicum of our humanism. The money trail-now highway-leads Rolls Royces to heaven and all others to Hell, at least visibly. Invisibility resides with the 1%. Never seen, always felt. To subscribe to capitalism is to increase the viscosity of their already vile concentration of global power. Short Shirt of Antigua sang Power in 1976 from which I quote: “Absolute power corrupts absolutely”. Worse we are constantly reminded that benign leaders always fail. Even their gods are unforgiving so Curtis Mayfield sings, if there’s a Hell below, we’re all gonna go, I rest.
I read the Uff report extract as you recommended and like the Paria and other reports I find it disdainful. I repeat the several experiences I have had with the law, lawyers, documentaries on international cases like 9-11, Cuba’s blockade, global drug and trafficking scenarios to convince myself that the laws are as fictive as the nursery rhymes. If we listen to the diminishing respect first world countries hold for the UN, then we can easily understand that what is said usually has little effect on what is done as in Palestine today. Marriage vows and pregnancy conflicts attest to this everywhere.
Politics and the judiciary are masks for the centuries old hegemony captured in the folk histories of China, India, Afrika and elsewhere. Plato exposed Socratic witticisms and all European literature endorse the recurring human weaknesses to not comply with directions for moral, physical, medical, fiscal improvements. Alcohol, drugs and deceit reign in every civil and other groups. We will help those we love in defiance of all regulations with justifications like, “Boy she sweet eh!” Because that’s our culture, we begin there and accommodate others to adopt best practises. As we know, these plans for global depopulation is at least a century old. We need a counter plan that will not be blue-printed by our leaders or A I.
Dear Afra,
Thank you.
Respectfully,
CHERRY ANN RAJKUMAR LLM, LLB, LEC, BA, Attorney-at-Law