At this stage, why the leeway to the PNM?

Recent public statements made by the Minister of Labour have raised some Jep nests. Those utterances concerned his reticence at dispatching certain members of the of the Unemployment Relief Programme [URP] managerial staff because of their "political colour".

Depending on the type of Jep, his utterances have provoked scathing attacks on, or spirited defence of what he said.

Regardless, because the persons are, every manjack, political appointees, his statements have brought to the front burner the role of political appointments in formulating and executing government policy, which is what, because of who I am, I wish here bluntly to address.

From time to time [especially when the PNM is not in power], public furore arises over the ethnicity of "political appointees". On the face of it, in a multi-ethnic society such as ours, it makes eminent sense for every employer to strive for ethnic balance when hiring. But, ought such ideal take precedence over, or be tempered by, the need to achieve efficiency? Or, put another way, is efficiency in the workplace compromised when ethnic balance is out of kelter? That, I'm afraid, is the million-kilogram elephant long in the room!

In my view therefore, the Minister, in belabouring his point of view in public view, has now unwittingly ripened the time to deal, once and for all, with the issue many have chosen to ignore [maybe in the misguided hope that, by closing their eyes, it would disappear?].

The reality is that the composition of Trinbago's population predominantly centres around two ethnic groups -the Indo-Trinbagonians and the Afro-Trinbagonians. Birds of a feather flock together; as a natural result, Trinbagonian  social, economic, religious and political activities and alliances by and large develop and sustain themselves along such ethnic lines. Within the political sphere, the evidence is manifested through the United National Congress [UNC] and the People's National Movement [PNM], which, despite their best efforts at convincing the public of otherwise, are held by the public as respectively catering to the needs of the Indo-Trinbagonian and Afro-Trinbagonian publics.

But, though a different ethnic group dominates each of the UNC and PNM, each warmly accommodates members not of its feather. Hence, within each political group one finds a minority which represents diversity. However, in that diversity, except for the UNC, the minority never attains any meaningful topmost position.

Because of their intrinsic composition, neither the UNC nor PNM can be faulted, on ethnic grounds, concerning the political appointments they make -a minority is a minority, any how one looks at it, so none can reasonably be expected to draw from its minority to make the majority of its political appointments. To find and apportion fault, therefore, one has to look for other premises. Seeing that such political appointments impact upon the wider citizenry, then the first area to examine must be the political appointer, for the fish rots from the head and the water upstream has to be clear for the water downstream to be clear.

The long misconception has been that politicians make policy for those whom they appoint to implement. I say "misconception", because creating policy is the primary responsibility of management, therefore, politicians are indeed managers of our national resources -of which the human is but one element- for, in creating policy, politicians, in essence, define what needs to be done, when and how what needs to be done is done and submit to being answerable to some higher authority when things go awry. In the end, their tenure is renewed or truncated depending on the way they answer -meaning, how they dealt with the problems on their plate.

Thus, when subordinate political appointees become problem-makers rather than problem-solvers, the political office that appoints them must have the guts to substitute them, for, as already mentioned, the water downstream can only be clear if the water upstream is clear.

Given the nature of Trinbagonian politics, that means, the 2010 general elections being over, whereby the PNM has been dispatched from control of the upstream because of its endemic corruption, the PNM must similarly be dispatched from every downstream point, to make room for the different breed of water molecules coming from the upstream point.

It's untenable for any who withstood PNM's withering assault over the years 2002 to mid 2010 to be asked to kowtow to the PNM's residuals for anything. Thus, bluntly put, anyone who does not comprehend, or who opposes that, has no appreciation for all and any who laboured long and hard to remove the corrupt PNM régime from office.