Ken Ali

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day sprung a ma­jor sur­prise in ap­point­ing a man­age­ment con­sul­tant to head the trou­bled Health Min­istry.

Therese Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis was nev­er in the pub­lic's glare be­fore she was tapped to lead the im­por­tant min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lio. She was one of the shock ap­point­ments made by PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar as the new Trinidad and To­ba­go Cab­i­net took shape four days af­ter her re­sound­ing gen­er­al elec­tion vic­to­ry. The man­age­ment con­sul­tan­cy of Bap­tiste-Cor­nelis and her hus­band, An­dre, at­tracts lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness. The 26-mem­ber Cab­i­net in­cludes Rudrawa­tee Nan Ram­goolam, who would head the Min­istry of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Ram­goolam was pre­vi­ous­ly po­lit­i­cal­ly ac­tive. Fazal Karim, who ran the sec­re­tari­at of Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress for sev­er­al years, land­ed the Min­istry of Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion. An­oth­er sur­prise was Em­manuel George, the re­tired for­mer per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties, who has re­turned to lead that port­fo­lio. The min­is­ter is well known na­tion­al­ly as DJ Hur­ri­cane George, for his prowess as a mu­si­cal en­ter­tain­er.

The ap­point­ment of econ­o­mist Mary King was an­oth­er rev­e­la­tion, es­pe­cial­ly in light of her port­fo­lio, that cov­ers plan­ning, eco­nom­ic and so­cial re­struc­tur­ing and gen­der af­fairs. Vas­ant Bharath re-emerged po­lit­i­cal­ly and was hand­ed the new min­is­te­r­i­al field of food pro­duc­tion, land and ma­rine af­fairs.

Long-stand­ing par­lia­men­tary back­bencher Nizam Baksh was up­grad­ed to head the Min­istry of Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment, while vet­eri­nar­i­an Dr Glen Ra­mad­hars­ingh was as­signed to the new Min­istry of the Peo­ple, which was twinned with So­cial De­vel­op­ment. Most of the oth­er ap­point­ments were pre­dictable, in­clud­ing that of the new Min­istry of Jus­tice, to be head­ed by re­cent­ly-re­tired ju­rist, Her­bert Vol­ney. Per­sad-Bisses­sar utilised the ser­vices of most of her Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and plucked sev­er­al oth­ers, who would be named to the Sen­ate.