It seemed as if none of the Min­is­ters ru­moured to be af­fect­ed by last week­end's Cab­i­net reshuf­fle had any idea of what was go­ing on with their ca­reers on Sat­ur­day. Most de­clined to an­swer their phones. Jack Warn­er was san­guine about talk of his min­istry be­ing split in­to two en­ti­ties. Rudrawa­tee Nan Ram­goolam re­spond­ed blunt­ly. "I don't know," the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion said. Sec­ond guess­ing the Prime Min­is­ter has tra­di­tion­al­ly been a fool's game in gov­ern­ment and com­ment­ing on the an­tic­i­pat­ed ac­tions of Cab­i­net's Min­is­ter in Chief would be po­lit­i­cal sui­cide. Bet­ter to be clue­less than out of turn.

The full ex­tent of the reshuf­fle was an­nounced last night by the Prime Min­is­ter in an ad­dress to the na­tion with changes to 13 port­fo­lios. Thir­teen months fol­low­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion is an ap­pro­pri­ate time for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship's po­lit­i­cal leader to re­view and re­think the Cab­i­net as­sign­ments made when the par­ty came to pow­er in May 2010. In the en­su­ing year, some Min­is­ters have emerged as per­form­ers, oth­ers have ad­just­ed to their port­fo­lios with vary­ing de­grees of suc­cess and there are those, un­for­tu­nate­ly, who will prompt no tears with their de­par­ture.

No doubt Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been an ob­ser­vant man­ag­er of her Cab­i­net col­leagues in their first year of ser­vice to her gov­ern­ment and to be sure, it was the first year in the role for quite a few of those new­ly-elect­ed Min­is­ters. Giv­en the daunt­ing list of promis­es that were of­fered on the cam­paign trail, it must be per­son­al­ly galling for the Prime Min­is­ter to re­alise that so many of the am­bi­tious plans of the new gov­ern­ment for its first 100 days re­main un­de­liv­ered to a pub­lic that's now un­afraid to be scep­ti­cal of po­lit­i­cal benev­o­lence. In that con­text, it's not out of line to hope that the changes in per­son­nel as well as as­sign­ment will re­sult in stronger align­ment among tal­ent, re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and an­tic­i­pat­ed re­sults.

Some of the planned changes sug­gest that the Prime Min­is­ter has been pay­ing close at­ten­tion to the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of those play­ing sup­port­ing roles to her Min­is­ters and has cho­sen to re­ward promis­ing tal­ent with ad­di­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties. Oth­er changes will re­quire some clar­i­fi­ca­tion from the Prime Min­is­ter. The de­ci­sion to split the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port in­to two do­min­ions over­see­ing over­lap­ping ar­eas of na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture ad­min­is­tra­tion is like­ly to prove both con­fus­ing and clum­sy to im­ple­ment. Many are like­ly to be non­plussed by the ap­par­ent slight to Jack Warn­er, who has earned plau­dits from both friend and foe for his in­dus­tri­ous man­age­ment of the port­fo­lio in his first year in the min­istry.

The shift­ing of Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan from Min­istry of En­er­gy to the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion might make sense from a tech­ni­cal per­spec­tive, giv­en the ma­jor em­pha­sis on ICT de­vel­op­ment be­ing over­seen by Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion, but there re­mains the is­sue of con­ti­nu­ity in the piv­otal En­er­gy Min­istry. Giv­en the crit­i­cal role that the en­er­gy port­fo­lio plays in sup­port­ing the bal­ance of pay­ments of T&T, no mis­takes can be made with this crit­i­cal rev­enue-earn­ing sec­tor, which must be hall­marked by sta­bil­i­ty and con­tin­u­ous at­ten­tion to the de­tails of its man­age­ment.

While there are many tal­ent­ed and ex­pe­ri­enced tech­nocrats sup­port­ing min­is­te­r­i­al de­ci­sion mak­ing at the Min­istry of En­er­gy, the sud­den shuf­fling of the En­er­gy Min­is­ter af­ter just one year may well send an un­for­tu­nate sig­nal to key play­ers in the lo­cal in­dus­try as well as for­eign in­vestors in­ter­est­ed in par­tic­i­pat­ing in the lo­cal en­er­gy sec­tor. In mak­ing this par­tic­u­lar change, it be­hooves the Prime Min­is­ter to en­sure that there is a full, thor­ough and de­tailed hand­ing over of projects and plan­ning cur­rent­ly un­der­way to the new Min­is­ter of En­er­gy. Let there be no haste in mak­ing this change where care might be of greater ben­e­fit.