I am saying this with all the respect I have – and everyone should have – for all professions, no matter how small they may be, when carried out honestly. It is however obvious that a pilot cannot operate on a brain and a heart surgeon can’t fly an aeroplane. This is not about denigrating any profession but about calling a spade a spade.

It’s not so much appointing a former steward and ticket stamper as a super CEO of all the airport activities in the country that is most outrageous. What is appalling is listening to the defence put up by someone who, not so long ago, used to take the moral high ground and pontificate about ethics, meritocracy and having the right man in the right place.

I much prefer the approach of the prime minister who, after making such openly partisan appointments in blatant contempt for meritocracy and fairness, goes about his own business of cutting ribbons as if nothing had happened. The message being, ‘I don’t owe you anything. It is my country, I am the king and I do what I like with my subjects.’

I get that attitude far more than Deputy Prime Minister Steven Obeegadoo stating on a private radio that because Ken Arian has some experience in aviation – that experience being serving tea and coffee in an aeroplane – he is well placed to save an ailing airline and all the companies associated with it at a time when utmost competence, skill and experience are called for. It is akin to thinking that a waiter is capable of running a hotel just because he has spent a few years providing room service. It is ludicrous!

Obeegadoo even had the intellectual dishonesty to turn the argument against the journalist: “It’s just like a journalist starting as a trainee and ending up as an editor in chief,” he said, alluding to the fact that not having formal qualifications is not restricted to Arian. What he forgot to mention is that the journalist slowly climbed up the professional ladder one painful step at a time, showing his ability and talent every bit of the way. What are the steps climbed up by Arian between stamping tickets and heading a conglomerate on which the whole country’s fate rests? Just what is there in his track record that suggests he is the man the whole country is looking up to to save the hundreds of jobs at stake and efficiently manage the billions of rupees he will be dealing with?

While this is going on, notice how the ICAC suddenly woke up from its slumber and started digging in its dusty drawers, not to finally deal with Angus Road or the Kistnen murder case – perish the thought – but to chase an opposition member and some civil servants. I am not talking about the guilt or innocence of those being investigated. That is for our courts to decide. However, I am bemused by the amount of information being distilled to the press on a daily basis by an organisation that is systematically averse to talking to journalists. It is so entertaining that we forgot that one single lucky man with no qualifications or experience is now in charge of all the airport activities! A mini prime minister in other words was born and forgotten about in one week.

Until Obeegadoo reminded us by insulting our intelligence! Had he kept quiet, we would even have forgotten that our compatriots are dying by the bucketful in our hospitals, that some have had their wrong leg amputated while others were administered medication meant for a different patient. We would also perhaps overlooked the latest scandal revealed by l’express of a nearly Rs3.5 billion loss our luminaries made selling aeroplanes. We would all be busy dissecting the titbits leaked by the ICAC!

Obeegadoo missed a great opportunity to keep his mouth shut. Standing behind his boss and clapping at the ribbon cutting while other institutions are busy bamboozling us would have been a much better strategy. Perhaps he didn’t get the memo?!