At the end of his usual guest stint on CBC ratio's Radio Noon, Carl Wells teased Premier Danny Williams' appearance on Here and Now on Tuesday talking about the fibreoptic deal controversy.
That plus a little analysis of Williams' usual media behaviour suggested that the controversy was something Williams felt was so serious he had to make an effort to head to the studios he doesn't usually visit personally.
Little could anyone expect that Williams' defense of the highly controversial deal would not only repeat the same hollow rationales but also add a few new wrinkles to the story.
Williams' appearance - both on NTV and CBC - was a bit of an own goal. That's the phrase security forces in Northern Ireland used to use during The Troubles to describe a plan that backfired. Like the IRA bombmaker who liked to store nitrogen-based fertilizer on the concrete floor of his garage and shift it around with a metal shovel.
They never did find the bomber.
or the shovel.
or most of the garage, for that matter.
Now Williams didn't blow himself to smithereens, but he failed to demolish the criticisms of the deal.
The fundamental problems in the government's justification of the deal are well known by now.
They include:
1. A failure to explain the reason why public money is invested in the project.
2. A failure to explain - in any detail - the value to the provincial government of acquiring fibreoptic cables. The provincial government is supposed to have a telecom strategy that will, among other things, see government's purchasing power as the largest telecom customer in the province to lower the cost of government-related telecom to the taxpayer.
3. The contradictions between versions of the story at different times.
4. Questions about the relationship between Danny and the proponents of the deal.
What the Premier did was:
1. Continue the vague benefit claims with words like "tremendous" but nothing in the way of concrete examples. Saying that third parties like Memorial University were spending between 10 and 100 times more than if they were located on the mainland doesn't give specific examples. Newfoundlanders and Labradorians are used to paying more for goods and services because, after all, they live on an island with a population of 500,000 people. Paying more ain't a surprise.
2. Refer vaguely to potential government savings - considering health care, educational and other services - that "could be" as much as $500 million over time.
Again with the vagueness. If the business plan accompanying the deal gave examples, government would use them. Concrete examples are the easiest way to persuade people
of a position: do this and this specific good thing will result.
Savings that "could be" $500 million over an unspecified time period, could also be monumental losses over the same time frame or a shorter one.
Danny's vagueness suggests that there is fact was no business plan, nor was there a detailed cost/benefit analysis.
After all, if a $15 million investment would reduce government telecom costs by a measurable amount each year for 10 years and would produce a measurable drop in research bandwidth, they could use those numbers. It's how businesses make decisions. It's called return on investment. Spend $100 bucks and save $10 bucks a year for 10 years. Spend $100 bucks and boost sales by $1000 bucks. Either one makes sense and even the most dense Rain Man in radio land can see the sense in simple numbers explained simply.
Williams' vagueness reinforces the facetious suggestion this deal was done on the golf course and that rest has been an exercise in finding excuses and rationalizations. There was no business plan. There is no case. Danny is making it up as he goes along.
It's hard to come to any other conclusion.
3. Continued contradictions and lame arguments. Williams now claims credit for rejecting the proposal the first time out of concerns about perceptions. Later he said the thing is "squeaky clean". These two thoughts can live in the same space and they remain one of the basic contradictions in the entire story.
If the deal smelled a bit at the outset, it was not rendered less stinky by waiting.
The whole thing remains clouded by suspicion especially when the Premier tells the NTV audience that Dean Macdonald and Ken Marshall "worked for me before". That little piece of half-truth has already been demolished but that the Premier keeps going back to such a weak position suggests he simply doesn't have a stronger one.
As if that wasn't enough, though Danny Williams compared this deal to a recent investment with Cooke Aquaculture adding that the whole controversy in the fibre deal seems to be a case of "attacking our own".
That's even lamer than some of the other positions.
For starters, the provincial government dropped $10 million into the Cooke project against the private sector investment of $135 million - about 7.5%. The GRAP deal involves government spending 28% on one portion of the project and dropping provincial cash in another phase of the same overall project.
Then there's the difference between the Cooke enterprise and the proponents of the recent deal. The one involving proportionately more government cash involves the Premier's former business partners and two people he appointed to the board of the provincial hydro corporation.
And if you are still paying attention, Cooke Aquaculture is a New Brunswick-based, family-owned operation. Rogers and MTS Allstream are just like Aliant: big companies with deep pockets, headquartered far, far west of Port aux Basques. [Revised: persona headquarters is in St. John's.]
Need we go on?
From a public relations perspective, announcing a deal like this should be very simple. You simply walk through the decision-making rationale, in summary. Here's the situation; these are the issues. Here's the decision. We had a problem with one aspect; here's how we tackled it according to our values of openness and transparency.
That should form a logical sequence. Since the argument persuaded the organization to take this or that action, a summary version of the same thing should persuade others.
When someone uses vague language, contradictory arguments and irrelevant side issues, people don't find that inherently persuasive. In fact, they start to look on the whole exercise a bit like the guy moving fertilizer around on a concrete floor with a metal shovel.
It might not have blown up in his face this time, but odds are good there will be a big bang sometime very soon.
Rather than support the endeavour, people are more apt to move to a safe distance. They can still see the show to come, but not be harmed by it themselves.
