One year ago to­day, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship swept in­to pow­er, win­ning the May 24, 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion by 29 seats to 12, there­by end­ing the stew­ard­ship over Trinidad and To­ba­go of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment. Last year's vic­to­ry of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship-which was an amal­ga­ma­tion of five po­lit­i­cal par­ties, led by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress-marked the first time a woman was giv­en the reins of pow­er in this coun­try. There is no doubt that that woman, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, brought some re­fresh­ing changes to the style of gov­er­nance prac­tised by the pre­vi­ous oc­cu­pant of the seat of pow­er, Patrick Man­ning.

On the cam­paign trail, and in her first few days of gov­ern­ment, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar pledged that her ad­min­is­tra­tion would serve the peo­ple and that it would lead by lis­ten­ing. That car­ing, al­most moth­er­ly, ap­proach of gov­ern­ment was best ex­em­pli­fied when the new­ly sworn in Prime Min­is­ter left the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny, donned black, rub­ber boots and a rain coat and went to bring re­lief to home­own­ers and farm­ers in cen­tral Trinidad who had been flood­ed out by the tor­ren­tial rains that lashed the coun­try that week. There is much to cel­e­brate in the year of gov­er­nance.

Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar is cred­it­ed with quelling the San Fer­nan­do doc­tors is­sue, which was just at the point of be­com­ing a na­tion­al em­barass­ment and she was able to lead a ne­go­ti­at­ed set­tle­ment for pub­lic ser­vants that will save the coun­try mil­lions in ad­di­tion­al salary, back­pay and low­er pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. The Prime Min­is­ter has been test­ed on two oc­ca­sions in which she was called up­on to make dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions with re­gard to two peo­ple who worked to make the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship vic­to­ry pos­si­ble. She was test­ed when the chair­man of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, vet­er­an at­tor­ney Nizam Mo­hammed, made some com­ments be­fore a Joint Se­lect Com­mit­tee meet­ing which were per­ceived as pro­mot­ing the in­ter­ests of one group in the coun­try over an­oth­er.

To her cred­it, the Prime Min­is­ter is­sued a state­ment dis­tanc­ing her­self and her gov­ern­ment from Mo­hammed's com­ments and a week lat­er his ap­point­ment was re­voked by Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards. Last month, the Prime Min­is­ter al­so act­ed prompt­ly in re­vok­ing the ap­point­ment of Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tor Mary King for fail­ing to main­tain an ap­pro­pri­ate dis­tance be­tween her­self and the award of a small con­tract to a com­pa­ny in which King was the cor­po­rate sec­re­tary and her hus­band was the chair­man. She has shown her­self to be a de­ci­sive leader and one who is will­ing and able to take tough de­ci­sions...at times.

There are oth­er times when Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar has failed to take de­ci­sions when a de­ci­sion was cry­ing out to be tak­en. The Gov­ern­ment has paid a price for fail­ing to act swift­ly when it be­came pub­lic knowl­edge that a ju­nior 31-year-old of­fi­cial of an in­tel­li­gence agency named Resh­mi Usha Ram­nar­ine had been ap­point­ed as the nter­im head of the spy agency on Jan­u­ary 14, 2011 af­ter ques­tions about her qual­i­fi­ca­tions and her suit­abil­i­ty for the job were raised. The con­tin­u­ing con­tes­ta­tion on the Caribbean Air­line board-in­volv­ing the vi­tal na­tion­al air­line, which has an an­nu­al bud­get of hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars-is an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the fail­ure by the leader to take a de­ci­sion that all the ad­vice she has re­ceived told her would be in the best in­ter­est of the air­line.

The Gov­ern­ment has al­so failed to re­verse the de­ci­sion, out­lined in the 2011 bud­get, with re­gard to the Cli­co is­sue, which has led to the lives of thou­sands of pol­i­cy­hold­ers of the in­sur­ance com­pa­ny be­ing made poor­er and more un­cer­tain fol­low­ing the ces­sa­tion of in­ter­est pay­ment. De­spite the mis­takes and mis­steps, the Prime Min­is­ter and her team re­tain a large mea­sure of the good­will that she earned one year ago. With the record in the first year be­ing de­cid­ed­ly mixed, it is ap­pro­pri­ate to­day to ex­tend hap­py birth­day wish­es to the thou­sands of peo­ple who worked hard to make pos­si­ble the elec­toral vic­to­ry of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and the scores of peo­ple who ac­cept­ed Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's call to serve both in Cab­i­net and on boards of gov­ern­ment agen­cies, state en­ter­pris­es and para-statal bod­ies. The coun­try ex­pects im­prove­ment in the sec­ond year in pow­er.