If thought­less­ness con­tin­ues to out­weigh rel­e­vant truth across the spec­trum of gov­er­nance, our so­ci­ety will for­ev­er be stymied in a vi­cious caul­dron of po­lit­i­cal pueril­i­ty.  

In a coun­try with a het­ero­ge­neous pro­file, where politi­cians have a pen­chant for thought­less and im­pru­dent racial re­marks, there will al­ways be an­noy­ing and stul­ti­fy­ing con­tention. There will be vex­a­tious dis­course, trig­gered by some­thing more pro­found than eth­nic­i­ty. Peo­ple are so­cial an­i­mals and feel a need for in­clu­sion.

It is pub­lic knowl­edge that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have politi­cised boards and used race as a cri­te­ri­on in the se­lec­tion of mem­bers. But we all be­long and gen­uine­ly iden­ti­fy with this pre­cious land. If de­ci­sions were premised on di­ver­si­ty, then that could strength­en the com­po­si­tion of boards, as long as the dom­i­nant rea­sons for se­lec­tion are the mer­its of qual­i­fi­ca­tion, ex­per­tise, cor­po­rate gov­er­nance com­pe­ten­cies and fit and prop­er stan­dards.

There should be no ar­gu­ment that suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments have been disin­gen­u­ous when it comes to board mem­ber­ship di­ver­si­ty, if that was in­deed their in­tent, con­sid­er­ing the glar­ing lack of mi­nor­i­ty groups of Eu­ro­pean, Syr­i­an/Lebanese, Chi­nese and cit­i­zens of mul­ti­cul­tur­al her­itage, not to men­tion the un­der-rep­re­sen­ta­tion of women who make up half of the pop­u­la­tion.

These cit­i­zens make sig­nif­i­cant con­tri­bu­tions to every sphere of na­tion­al life. Still, the over­rid­ing qual­i­fi­ca­tions for ap­point­ment should be rel­e­vant ex­per­tise and eth­i­cal pro­fes­sion­al­ism, as men­tioned ear­li­er; oth­er­wise, we could ex­pect the sta­tus quo to pre­vail—poor im­ple­men­ta­tion and cor­rupt in­sti­tu­tions. We are aware of their traits, in­clud­ing peren­ni­al fail­ure to pub­lish an­nu­al ac­counts with­in statu­to­ry dead­lines, if at all; poor ser­vice; in­ef­fi­cient project man­age­ment; top-heavy man­age­ment struc­tures; poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion; un­mo­ti­vat­ed em­ploy­ees, etc, and ap­par­ent non-ex­is­tent ac­count­abil­i­ty for poor per­for­mance.   

In the in­ter­est of the pub­lic good, what mat­ters is the board’s char­ac­ter and mem­bers’ abil­i­ty to per­form their gov­er­nance func­tion ef­fi­cient­ly. The judg­ment against the board mem­bers of the for­mer Sports Com­pa­ny of T&T Lim­it­ed for breach of fidu­cia­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in fa­cil­i­tat­ing a failed $34 mil­lion con­tract for the al­leged­ly cor­rupt Life­S­port pro­gramme should bring in­sight for board mem­bers of pub­lic en­ti­ties and the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate.

The oblig­a­tion of board mem­bers, even those ap­point­ed as gov­ern­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tives, is to the com­pa­ny, not to the Gov­ern­ment. Boards are not rub­ber stamps for min­is­ters and the Cab­i­net. They must make in­de­pen­dent and pru­dent de­ci­sions and be coura­geous in the face of in­ter­fer­ence. Fear of min­is­ters or the Gov­ern­ment’s wrath is thought­less­ness and dis­re­gard for the pub­lic good. It is what breeds cor­rup­tion and evil; all the more rea­son why per­sons should be se­lect­ed based on mer­it. Di­ver­si­ty is achiev­able with­in that con­text.

As the late Han­nah Arendt, the Ger­man Amer­i­can philoso­pher and his­to­ri­an, said, thought­less­ness is the aban­don­ment of the ca­pac­i­ty to think. It is “wil­ful aban­don­ment of re­flec­tion and a con­science de­ci­sion not to ex­am­ine one’s ac­tions and com­plic­i­ty in wrong­do­ing.” It is a lack of un­der­stand­ing of the mean­ing of one’s role in a sys­tem. Think­ing, she said, “is not mere­ly in­tel­lec­tu­al but moral, and what should make us ask whether what we are do­ing is right … It is what trans­forms us from in­stru­ments of pow­er in­to be­ings of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Thought­less­ness re­sults in rou­tine obe­di­ence to lead­ers who val­ue loy­al­ty over truth … Thought is what hu­man­is­es us to think out­side ide­olo­gies and blind obe­di­ence.” In­deed, I add, to think out­side of the racial box.

While the SporTT judg­ment holds lessons for board mem­bers, an­oth­er con­cern is the hor­ren­dous is­sues in the gov­er­nance and man­age­ment of pris­ons. We have heard all too fre­quent­ly about il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ties with­in prison walls—the dis­cov­ery of weapons, il­lic­it drugs, hits or­dered from be­hind the walls, and es­capes. In any oth­er coun­try se­ri­ous­ly com­mit­ted to re­duc­ing crime, heads would have long since rolled, start­ing with the min­istry’s hi­er­ar­chy who are re­spon­si­ble for pro­vid­ing crit­i­cal tech­ni­cal and oth­er re­sources to fa­cil­i­tate man­age­r­i­al ef­fi­cien­cy and op­er­a­tional safe­ty. 

Grant­ed, prison gov­er­nance and man­age­ment are com­plex mat­ters, as dai­ly, the lives of prison of­fi­cers are at risk, and in a small coun­try like ours, un­der­stand­ably, there are le­git­i­mate fears. It is to the Gov­ern­ment’s cred­it that it seems to be tack­ling the mat­ter head-on. Hope­ful­ly, that doesn’t turn out to be an­oth­er ran­dom ex­er­cise, but part of a sol­id strate­gic frame­work that, when ful­ly op­er­a­tionalised, will bring about an ef­fi­cient prison sys­tem.  

There’s a need for thought­ful­ness. Much re­mains to be done to achieve sus­tained growth, re­duced crime, qual­i­ty ed­u­ca­tion, and im­proved health­care. This col­umn has stat­ed be­fore that every sig­nif­i­cant prob­lem fac­ing us is root­ed in the qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance, and gov­er­nance un­der our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic Con­sti­tu­tion en­com­pass­es both the elect­ed Gov­ern­ment and the elect­ed Op­po­si­tion.

More thought­ful­ness across the spec­trum of gov­er­nance will en­gen­der moral lead­er­ship.