To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

?Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar made all the right moves and said all the right things when she spoke di­rect­ly to her new min­is­ters and par­lia­men­tary sec­re­taries at yes­ter­day's swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny of the bal­ance of the Cab­i­net at Knowsley.

Her sim­ple yet pro­found ad­vice to the new mem­bers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Cab­i­net was cer­tain­ly an ap­pro­pri­ate mes­sage for a Prime Min­is­ter to be de­liv­er­ing to those who will serve the peo­ple in var­i­ous ways over the course of the next five years. Among the pearls of wis­dom ut­tered by the Prime Min­is­ter to her min­is­ters yes­ter­day in­clud­ed the need to fo­cus on re­sults, ded­i­cat­ing their en­er­gies to ad­dress­ing the needs of the pop­u­la­tion, the need to lis­ten to what peo­ple are say­ing and keep­ing con­nect­ed and ground­ed. In sharp dis­tinc­tion to the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment ad­min­is­tra­tion, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar ruled out the wear­ing of par­ty sym­bols when min­is­ters are con­duct­ing of­fi­cial busi­ness and she or­dered the re­moval of the prime min­is­te­r­i­al coat of arms from the ve­hi­cles that will trans­port her around the coun­try.

She al­so di­rect­ed her new Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, John Sandy, to put mech­a­nisms in place to en­sure that for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, who demit­ted of­fice this week, re­ceives a se­cu­ri­ty de­tail and a ve­hi­cle. These words and ac­tions were pow­er­ful and nec­es­sary sig­nals on on­ly her third day on the job but they were not suf­fi­cient. In the full glare of the na­tion's tele­vi­sion and ra­dio sta­tions, Web sites and news­pa­pers, the coun­try's new leader should have used her first ad­dress to the mem­bers of her Cab­i­net to warn them that a min­is­te­r­i­al ap­point­ment is not an av­enue to un­war­rant­ed per­son­al, fam­i­ly or com­mu­ni­ty en­rich­ment. When Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar said on the cam­paign trail that the three re­quire­ments of her ad­min­is­tra­tion would be to serve the peo­ple, serve the peo­ple and serve the peo­ple, she was clear­ly sig­nalling that her ad­min­is­tra­tion would be dif­fer­ent from every­thing that has gone be­fore. That the em­pha­sis should be on val­ue for mon­ey, com­pen­sa­tion linked to per­for­mance and the de­vel­op­ment of a true mer­i­toc­ra­cy in which the la­bels of eth­nic­i­ty and po­lit­i­cal par­ty al­le­giance would be­come im­ma­te­r­i­al.

She should have pub­licly warned the min­is­ters–many of whom have lit­tle record of ser­vice at the na­tion­al lev­el–to ex­pect of­fers and in­duce­ments from peo­ple who may be look­ing to cut cor­ners, in­flu­ence the out­come of con­tract de­lib­er­a­tions or en­gage in ad­ven­tures with the pub­lic's mon­ey. Her ad­vice to her charges should have in­clud­ed some words to the par­ty's fi­nanciers that they should not ex­pect that their do­na­tions would give them an un­fair ad­van­tage in the pro­cure­ment of con­tracts un­der the new rul­ing par­ty as there is a com­mit­ment to thor­ough re­form and re­view of the pro­cure­ment pro­ce­dures of the State and state-owned com­pa­nies such as Ude­cott, Nipdec and Nid­co. She should al­so have warned the new min­is­ters to em­brace the dis­clo­sure re­quire­ments out­lined in the In­tegri­ty in Pub­lic Life Act–how­ev­er in­tru­sive, bur­den­some and time-con­sum­ing those re­quire­ments seem to be.

She could have used as case stud­ies to il­lus­trate her point the dif­fi­cul­ties that the 1995 to 2001 Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress ad­min­is­tra­tion got in­to over the cor­rupt­ing of the Pi­ar­co Air­port pro­cure­ment process and the dif­fi­cul­ty that the 2001 to 2010 PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion got in­to over the pro­cure­ment prac­tices of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott). It may be that these and oth­er points touch­ing on in­tegri­ty and trans­paren­cy have been made to the new Cab­i­net min­is­ters pre­vi­ous­ly or were made dur­ing the first Cab­i­net meet­ing yes­ter­day fol­low­ing the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny.

The mer­it of mak­ing these points pub­licly be­fore a na­tion­al au­di­ence is that it im­me­di­ate­ly sets a high bar for the ad­min­is­tra­tion's po­si­tion on in­tegri­ty in pub­lic life and it sig­nals the se­ri­ous­ness with which the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship views putting the wel­fare of all the peo­ple ahead of the wel­fare of the Cab­i­net or mem­bers of the par­ty. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion is still very young and there will be op­por­tu­ni­ties, no doubt, for her to make these points in the near fu­ture.