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Saturday, May 3, 2025

Take charge, madame PM

by

20100830

Let us hope the Gov­ern­ment us­es the once again promised re­treat to pull things to­geth­er and start to fo­cus on its pro­gramme, if in­deed it has one.?

True, it's been on­ly about 100 days since in pow­er and many of the min­is­ters are still find­ing their feet and, yes, it's the civ­il ser­vants who keep gov­ern­ment ser­vices tick­ing over. But sure­ly it's time for the Gov­ern­ment to show some uni­ty and di­rec­tion and the re­treat and the com­ing bud­get are op­por­tu­ni­ties to do so.?Luck­i­ly the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance seems to be one of the few do­ing his home­work and, de­spite some glitch­es (the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund er­ror and the com­ment on the salary for the new Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice), he is not talk­ing much or leav­ing the coun­try on trips that do not ap­pear to be worth the mon­ey spent. I would have ex­pect­ed new min­is­ters to say lit­tle or noth­ing for the first few months whilst they learned how their min­istries func­tion and who are the re­al pow­er bro­kers with­in them.

In­stead they ap­pear in­tent on pos­ing for pic­tures with in­di­vid­u­als who they per­son­al­ly seem to have helped and not be­cause of their min­istry's poli­cies. They al­so seem to want to fol­low in the foot­steps of the lo­qua­cious Min­is­ter of Work. What is it about this min­istry that makes peo­ple in charge there be­lieve they know every­thing? First we had Im­bert and his end­less let­ters and smirk­ing re­marks, now it's Warn­er, the lat­est Mr Know-It All. Whether it's roads, traf­fic schemes, bar­ri­ers, wa­ter taxis, flood­ing, crime, the death penal­ty, foot­ball, he knows it all. It al­so seems to be the gen­er­al opin­ion in the me­dia that he not on­ly knows it all but he is Mr Get-It-Done, ex­cept that one must ask the ques­tion: what ex­act­ly has he done, ex­cept talk a lot at four o'clock in the morn­ing and look busy on his cell?

It is true that, in the Caribbean, the per­son who talks most is the one every­body be­lieves is do­ing the most but this is car­ry­ing the thing to ab­surd lev­els. Ideas are one thing, deeds are an­oth­er. Mr Warn­er has un­doubt­ed­ly tak­en ad­van­tage of Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar's pro­longed ab­sences to seize the lime­light. Sim­ply put, the PM has been trav­el­ling far too much. Since her elec­tion, she's been out of the coun­try for 19 days or one in five. Any new en­ter­prise needs to have its leader on hand, to lead and to give di­rec­tion as well as to keep dis­ci­pline among the troops.?A pat­tern is be­ing set up or has been set up where in­di­vid­ual min­is­ters seem to be out of con­trol and mouthing off on var­i­ous as­pects of gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy and it is con­fus­ing.

?

Take the Chil­dren's Life Fund. Is it on? Is it be­ing de­vel­oped? How much mon­ey is in it? Who is in charge of the $100 mil­lion? The Min­is­ter of Health says it is in the process of be­ing set up. The PM goes away and comes back with promis­es of mon­ey and med­ical as­sis­tance from some group of doc­tors.?Who se­lect­ed them? Who ad­vised her? Why have some chil­dren al­ready been se­lect­ed to go away? Who de­cid­ed this? Was there med­ical in­put in­to their se­lec­tion? Is the choice of chil­dren to go away to be a po­lit­i­cal one??Trans­paren­cy, ob­jec­tiv­i­ty, a recog­nised process have to be put in place. And quick­ly, be­fore the eu­pho­ria of re­mov­ing the PNM evap­o­rates. The mem­bers of this Gov­ern­ment and the PM es­pe­cial­ly, should not for­get that peo­ple did not nec­es­sar­i­ly vote them in be­cause of their per­son­al qual­i­ties or poli­cies.

Most of us just want to get on with our lives whilst the Gov­ern­ment in­ter­feres the least pos­si­ble. We es­pe­cial­ly want to see a plan for crime con­trol and for get­ting the econ­o­my mov­ing. One would have to look long and deep for any analy­sis of its poli­cies which, so far, ap­pear to be a set of promis­es. Giv­ing chil­dren lap­tops or rais­ing the pen­sion for se­nior cit­i­zens are not poli­cies. They are po­lit­i­cal "ini­tia­tives." Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar should not for­get that many peo­ple, apart from the UNC faith­ful, as in­tol­er­ant as the big­ot­ed "PN­Mites for life," vot­ed not for her but against Mr Man­ning and the PNM. She is not there be­cause of any­thing spe­cial she stands for or did in the past, but be­cause of what Mr Man­ning stood for.?Yes, she seized the mo­ment and, first­ly, with the help of the UNC rank and file, got rid of Mr Pan­day and we must for­ev­er be grate­ful for that.

Then with the as­sis­tance of the Ude­cott scan­dal and Mr Row­ley's machi­na­tions, even dur­ing the mid­dle of the elec­tion, as Mr Im­bert keeps sub­tly and not so sub­tly re­mind­ing us, she suc­ceed­ed in putting to­geth­er a coali­tion of an­ti-PNM forces. We are dou­ble grate­ful to her for that.?But sure­ly she must know that her coali­tion is full of man-crabs, her Cab­i­net is in­creas­ing­ly be­gin­ning to look like a crowd­ed mud-hole, and its rain­ing heav­i­ly.

Kind­ly take charge, madame.


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