What Wendell must have Endured

With the FTC hearing into C&W application for rebalancing and adjustment of rates barely on the way, the drama of the intervenor has only just begun to unfold.

It was one thing to write and submit a letter of intervention but another when confronted with having to service and sustain that initial action to the end.

Whether or not one can call it a responsibility, for those intervenors who have diligently set out on the paper chase, it has been a nightmare of meetings, daily e-mails and numerous telephone calls.

For these intervenors, this "C&W thing" has taken over their lives. Those who were early for appointments are now late. Family lives have been disrupted and the one legal assistance to intervenors, Public Counsel, is overburdened.

On many occasions, Public Counsel was still in his office on the telephone with me until long after 9 p.m. and I am only one intervenor. Apart from that, many of us have worked well into the next morning; researching, compiling information and reading the affidavits of the applicant C&W.

The first shocker was the Procedural Conference where 17 intervenors for the first time found themselves in a totally unfamiliar environment but where the lawyers were very comfortable.

It was announced that the FTC hearings would be following the rules and procedures of the Supreme Court. Most were unfamiliar with what lay ahead and had no idea of the work that we had in for us.

The second shocker was receiving the full application of C&W. It was then that we knew we were in for a hell of a time. It is an average of about 500 pages of material to study and having no background in accountancy or telecommunications, it looks like Mt. Everest .

We therefore have to thank those professionals; accountants and engineers, who came forward to offer assistance and who consented to be expert witnesses for various intervenors.

From here on in it was a battle to meet impossible deadlines. The first problem is that we were required to submit affidavits of expert witnesses on the same day that C&W filed its application.

This was impossible although experts had come forward. The problem is that they were not yet appraised about what was required of them and they wanted to go through material before they committed themselves.

Intervenors, seeing the dark days that lay ahead, resorted to writing letters objecting to timelines and requesting more time to complete each task.

We were then hit with a response from the FTC informing us that we had to file a motion, complete with affidavits, if we wanted an extension of time. A motion has a special format which none of us knew and we had to rely on Public Council to guide us in this matter.

There were also the claims of confidentiality for five documents containing accounting tables, which experts declared to be run of the mill information and they were surprised that C&W would claim that this information was classified as a trade secret.

This sent experts into a tail spin, crying foul. The question is how were they supposed to determine the reasonableness of C&W submission, when simple things like component costs of overseas calls and business calls were not available?

The next item on the agenda then became letters of objection to C&W claim for confidentiality. While some of the letters of objection have already been submitted, this is the point where we are at right now and we are barely at the tip of the iceberg.

As a result of the motions filed the Fair Trading Commission has set Wednesday 15 th October 2003 as the date of the new Procedural Conference, where new timelines will be established.

Also, as a result of the application by C&W for confidentiality to be attached to six documents and subsequent objections to confidentiality, that hearing will be on the 29 th October 2003, which was the date originally set for the hearings to begin.

As intervenors, we now find ourselves confronted with issues which would normally face lawyers, accountants, financial experts, telecom engineers, political scientists and economists.

It is from this perspective that one should understand what Wendell McClean must have gone through as he stood like a lonely beacon for the people of Barbados . True, he was an economist, but that is only one of the many skills needed to deal with the strength and resources of a C&W.