?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.