The Tribune

YESTERDAY the newly appointed National Insurance Board came out in full support of their chairman Marco City MP Gregory Moss, who seems unclear about his duties. In other words, what has to be clarified is whether he has been appointed NIB’s chairman or executive board chairman.

There is quite a difference between being a chairman, who sits on the board with his members to make certain that government policy is being carried out, and an executive chairman, who dabbles in the day-to-day workings of the NIB office. An executive chairman’s post would bring him into direct conflict with NIB Director Algernon Cargill, whose position under the NIB Act is Chief Executive Officer of the Board. As title seems important to Mr Moss, we must first get the matter of title and duties clarified so that we know exactly what job description he has been given, and what the public is to expect of him.

According to Mr Cargill from the day Mr Moss flew in from Grand Bahama, “he sought to control personally the day-to-day operations of NIB.”

In Mr Moss’ dispute with suspended director Cargill, the Board announced yesterday that Mr Moss is acting as their “chief spokesperson.” This is rather interesting. We presume from that statement the board also assumes responsibility for what Mr Cargill has called “false allegations” in a November 8th letter written by Mr Moss, for which he is being sued by Mr Cargill.

We suggest that those pulling the strings behind the curtains to rid themselves of Mr Cargill and replace him with Mr Moss have gone about it clumsily. Instead of announcing that they no longer want Mr Cargill’s services, pay off the remainder of his contract and quietly let sleeping dogs lie, they conceived what they thought a clever plan. It appears that the plan was not only to fire Mr Cargill, but to smear his good name with the public as an efficient and conscientious executive. Therefore, when it came time for him to walk the plank, the public would have been already conditioned into believing that whoever was pulling the plug on his career was justified in doing so.

This was done in a letter written by Mr Moss — presumably as the board’s “chief spokesperson” to accuse Mr Cargill of all sorts of serious infractions. The Moss letter, although addressed to his immediate boss, Labour Minister Shane Gibson, was copied to Prime Minister Christie, the Board of Directors, and to Mr Cargill’s subordinate, Mrs Cecile Bethel, who it is understood has taken over in his absence.

The lengthy letter was also “leaked” to the press and got wide publication on the various websites.

“I was not provided with a copy of the letter or afforded any opportunity to answer the false and scandalous allegations contained in the letter before the publication,” Mr Cargill complained.

But they went too far with their low-down tricks. Mr Cargill had worked too long and hard to establish a solid reputation. He decided to expose the lot of them. He retained a lawyer and filed a Supreme Court case against them. Today all their dirty linen will be washed in public, leaving them like a net of fish, flip, flopping to and fro gasping for life.

But as the NIB board has embraced Mr Moss as their spokesman, we would like to ask them some pertinent questions.

Who is this man Moss? Or maybe, better put, we should ask: Who does this man Moss think that he is? Obviously, he is trying to place himself as near to being a Minister as he possibly can, although we understand when he ordered Mr Cargill out of his own office so he could take it over for himself, he instructed an interior decorator to be retained to decorate it to “a standard befitting of a Minister.” The public should understand that a board chairman has no need of an office, because he only has to go in for board meetings, which certainly are not daily affairs. But the mighty Moss needed a grand office, and the man who did the work was pushed to the side into a smaller dwelling. No interior decorator was called in to use the public’s money to refashion Mr Cargill’s small office to befit a director.

And then there was the matter of a car. Yes, a government car was always provided for the director, who had the choice of having a government maintained car, or a monthly gasoline allowance for his own car. Mr Cargill opted for a government car, which we understand cost $44,000.

On the other hand, here we have newly arrived Mr Moss, in the capacity of chairman who not only wants a car, but needs a chauffeur. This is the first time in the history of NIB that a chairman has been provided with a car. In the past chairmen drove themselves to the NIB building on the few occasions when their presence was required. But not only does Mr Moss want his private car —cost $55,000, $10,000 more than Mr Cargill’s to reflect his importance, but he must also have a chauffeur, and a parking space provided in the parking lot.

This reminds us of a conversation we overheard last year between two young men — both black. One was advising the other on the purchase of a car. “You can’t get that car,” one of them scoffed. “If you want status, you have to have a big car. Man, no black man is going to respect you unless you drive a big car!”

We hope this is not true. But, if it is, we are indeed a shamefully shallow, worthless people.

And if anyone has ever heard of the “black crab syndrome”, but wonder what it is, we are seeing it in full sail as a handful of politicians try to destroy one of their own whose reputation is superior to theirs. In all of this we are witnessing the “black crab syndrome.”

We have never forgotten this story, told us when a child by the late Harbour Islander Wilton Albury, a retired Inspector of Schools, who spent his days in retirement at The Tribune. He swore that the story was true.

One day, he said, there were two barrels of crabs. One contained all white crabs, the other all black. The next morning when the barrels, which had no lids, were inspected, it was found that all the white crabs had disappeared. However, in the black barrel every crab was still there.

The reason: The white crabs worked as a team all night. One pushing the other up to get over the top, until every crab had achieved freedom. There was also a lot of activity all night in the black crab’s barrel. What happened there was that as each black crab neared the top, the others pulled him back down.

We determined to test this in crab season to see if in fact it was true. However, we never did. We saw too much of it among people in this country to understand that if the story was not true among crabs, it was certainly true among people.

Today Algernon Cargill is the victim of the syndrome.