KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

As new­ly-mint­ed Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young an­nounced his new Cab­i­net yes­ter­day, he said he’s hop­ing his min­is­ters will not see the re-shuf­fling of their port­fo­lios as de­mo­tions.

Young ad­just­ed sev­en min­istries, in­clud­ing ap­point­ing for­mer Min­istry of Fi­nance per­ma­nent sec­re­tary and for­mer High Com­mis­sion­er to the Unit­ed King­dom, Vish­nu Dhan­paul, as the new Min­is­ter of Fi­nance.

Colm Im­bert was ap­point­ed the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, while Mar­vin Gon­za­les was named Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Fitzger­ald Hinds was re­al­lo­cat­ed as a Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter.

Adri­an Leonce is now the Hous­ing Min­is­ter af­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is was ap­point­ed At­tor­ney Gen­er­al.

Dig­i­tal Trans­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Has­sel Bac­chus al­so got the ad­di­tion­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance.

Ad­dress­ing the changes, Young said, “I ab­solute­ly hope they don’t see it in that way (de­mo­tion) what­so­ev­er... You’re not see­ing what you saw in pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments. You’re not see­ing shifts every Mon­day morn­ing, et cetera. It was an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to take our strate­gic de­ci­sions, for us to look, for me to look at it strate­gi­cal­ly, know­ing what I want to do in the fu­ture, and re­align cer­tain port­fo­lios and min­is­ters.

“They should not at all see it as a de­mo­tion. These things hap­pen very of­ten. In fact, if you look at the pre­vi­ous Cab­i­nets, I think I was one of the most reshuf­fled min­is­ters in the last 10 years, and at no pe­ri­od in time should a min­is­ter see that as a de­mo­tion. They’re still there as part of the gov­ern­ment.”

Re­veal­ing the in­tent be­hind the reshuf­fling, Young said Hinds has a lot of strengths and he wants him a lit­tle clos­er to him, hence his place­ment in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter. When it comes to Im­bert, Young said his switch had noth­ing to do with the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al is­sue, as the “mat­ter has been dealt with.” In­stead, he said there are some things he in­tends to do in the not-too-dis­tant fu­ture that need­ed Im­bert in a dif­fer­ent port­fo­lio.

Speak­ing of Im­bert’s re­place­ment (Dhan­paul), Young said he be­lieves he’s some­one that could “lit­er­al­ly hit the ground run­ning in the Min­istry of Fi­nance” and the “tim­ing is right.”

Twen­ty-two min­is­ters, in­clud­ing Young, re­tained their pre­vi­ous port­fo­lios.

The de­ci­sion to re­main as En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter, Young said, made sense based on the re­la­tion­ships he’s al­ready built with de­ci­sion-mak­ers in the en­er­gy sec­tor.

“With re­spect to the Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, we all know how crit­i­cal that min­istry is, not that it is more crit­i­cal than any, but the amount of work that has gone in­to it and in par­tic­u­lar the spe­cif­ic em­pha­sis when you’re deal­ing with geopol­i­tics right now, and where Trinidad and To­ba­go falls in­to that with re­spect to our Min­istry of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries, what we’ve been able to achieve, what we’ve got­ten done but al­so some of the things that need a lit­tle bit of fo­cus and em­pha­sis,” Young said.

“So at this stage, I thought it pru­dent to hold on to that port­fo­lio un­til an ap­pro­pri­ate time. I am the one who has worked it through. I am the one whom for the last few years has man­aged to pull a lot of threads to­geth­er and at this stage, I think it is im­por­tant that we see how things are un­fold­ing, and I will con­tin­ue with the re­la­tion­ships I’ve built.”

While he re­fused to re­veal the elec­tion date, Young said ab­solute­ly noth­ing is ruled out when asked if it will no longer be at the end of April.