Some lead­ers who have be­come fall­en he­roes “duck and run”, oth­ers ex­tri­cate them­selves but still stay in the back­ground pulling the con­trol strings, while oth­ers re­tire spend­ing time with their fam­i­ly and writ­ing their mem­oirs.

Per­sons may judge them harsh­ly, some say­ing they have aban­doned the ship as cow­ard quit­ters, oth­ers say­ing they should have left a long time ago, giv­ing oth­ers a chance to sal­vage the na­tion.

Nine years in pow­er is a long time to judge one’s lead­er­ship ca­pa­bil­i­ty. Ris­ing cost of liv­ing, stag­nant wages, in­creas­ing un­em­ploy­ment, ris­ing hous­ing costs, in­creas­ing rent, in­creas­ing gun vi­o­lence, deficit bud­gets, in­creas­ing na­tion­al debt, and poor bor­der se­cu­ri­ty are just some of the prob­lems peo­ple grap­ple with.

Sur­pris­ing­ly, I am not writ­ing about T&T. These con­cerns were ar­tic­u­lat­ed by Cana­di­an au­thor and in­vestor Kevin O’Leary, who com­ment­ed on Cana­da’s plight and the res­ig­na­tion of Prime Min­is­ter Justin Trudeau, whom he de­scribed as “the id­iot king, Cana­da’s worst PM, whose waste­ful spend­ing bor­ders on fi­nan­cial malfea­sance. Cit­i­zens suf­fer while the PM and his par­ty mem­bers seek their self-in­ter­est … Trudeau was nev­er fit for of­fice and was clue­less about how to run the coun­try and has left a dis­grace­ful lega­cy as he was all talk and show with, no ex­e­cu­tion skills.”

Psy­chol­o­gist Jor­dan Pe­ter­son de­scribes Trudeau as “an ac­tor and a liar and his cab­i­net’s mis­han­dling of the econ­o­my as a chaot­ic clown show ... Trudeau has de­stroyed his par­ty and coun­try. His par­ty has no clear leader and they have blood on their hands for mur­der­ing the econ­o­my. Both his un­met promis­es and a dis­con­nec­tion from the re­al­i­ties faced by Cana­di­ans led to his dis­mal 16 per cent ap­proval rat­ings.”

Trudeau once promised to be a vi­brant pro­gres­sive leader. Mem­o­ries of his fa­ther, a for­mer PM, played a part in his ac­cep­tance. Re­gret­tably, he will be re­mem­bered for mak­ing Cana­di­ans’ way of life far worse than when he took of­fice. Dy­nasty pol­i­tics pro­vid­ed for nos­tal­gia and show­man­ship but not a sub­stan­tive leader.

The res­ig­na­tion of his fi­nance min­is­ter, cou­pled with a pub­lic let­ter de­tail­ing deep dis­sat­is­fac­tion with­in his par­ty ini­ti­at­ed Trudeau’s res­ig­na­tion. Many Cana­di­ans saw his car­bon tax as a fi­nan­cial bur­den. The in­flux of over a mil­lion le­gal im­mi­grants re­sult­ed in hous­ing short­ages and in­creased rents, leav­ing fam­i­lies strug­gling to find suit­able liv­ing con­di­tions. His past re­buke of Don­ald Trump al­so her­alds trou­ble ahead.

Trudeau says he will stay in of­fice un­til a new leader is cho­sen. In the mean­time, the Cana­di­an par­lia­ment has been pro­rogued un­til March 24. Op­po­si­tion MP Pierre Poilievre op­pos­es this, say­ing Trudeau now es­capes par­lia­men­tary scruti­ny and a no-con­fi­dence vote and he is still be­hind the scenes try­ing to ma­nip­u­late things. Pierre ac­cused Trudeau’s par­ty mem­bers of dis­tanc­ing them­selves from him, as he is now too un­pop­u­lar to win the gen­er­al elec­tions, but they, too, should be re­ject­ed, as they were all part and par­cel of his failed ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The Jan­u­ary 6 ed­i­to­r­i­al of the Sri Lan­ka Guardian wrote, “Be­neath the ef­ful­gent im­agery of gen­der-bal­anced cab­i­nets and per­for­ma­tive so­cial me­dia en­gage­ments lies a dis­con­cert­ing re­al­i­ty: a leader whose ac­tions be­tray a lack of sub­stan­tive vi­sion and whose pri­or­i­ties ap­pear more aligned with self-ag­gran­dis­e­ment than na­tion­al ad­vance­ment … crit­ics have right­ly ques­tioned whether Trudeau’s eco­nom­ic poli­cies are guid­ed by long-term strat­e­gy or by a de­sire to cur­ry favour with spe­cif­ic con­stituen­cies.

“The SNC-Lavalin af­fair, where­in Trudeau was found to have im­prop­er­ly pres­sured the at­tor­ney gen­er­al to in­ter­vene in a crim­i­nal case in­volv­ing a Que­bec-based en­gi­neer­ing firm, re­vealed a dis­turb­ing will­ing­ness to pri­ori­tise po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­di­en­cy over the rule of law. Sim­i­lar­ly, the WE Char­i­ty scan­dal, which saw the Trudeau gov­ern­ment award­ing a lu­cra­tive con­tract to an or­gan­i­sa­tion with close ties to his fam­i­ly, erod­ed pub­lic trust and un­der­scored a pat­tern of gov­er­nance marred by con­flicts of in­ter­est.

“For a prime min­is­ter who once styled him­self as a paragon of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty, Trudeau’s record is a damn­ing in­dict­ment of hypocrisy. Trudeau’s tenure ex­em­pli­fies the per­ils of lead­er­ship un­teth­ered from sub­stance. Cana­da must de­mand bet­ter—to en­vi­sion a fu­ture where gov­er­nance is de­fined not by plat­i­tudes but by pur­pose.

“What does Cana­da re­quire in its next leader? The an­swer lies not in an­oth­er it­er­a­tion of per­for­ma­tive pro­gres­sivism but in a leader who val­ues sub­stance over style, and prag­ma­tism over pos­tur­ing. Cana­da needs a states­man ca­pa­ble of restor­ing its in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion, ad­dress­ing do­mes­tic in­equities with alacrity, and unit­ing a frac­tured elec­torate. Trudeau’s de­par­ture, if and when it tran­spires, should serve as an in­flec­tion point—an op­por­tu­ni­ty for Cana­da to re­claim its erst­while role as a paragon of prin­ci­pled yet prag­mat­ic gov­er­nance. For this to oc­cur, the Lib­er­al Par­ty must es­chew the temp­ta­tion to anoint an­oth­er leader in Trudeau’s mould and in­stead seek a fig­ure of gen­uine con­vic­tion and com­pe­tence.”

I think those in the PNM grap­pling with lead­er­ship is­sues should take note.