While con­grat­u­la­tions are cer­tain­ly due to fresh­ly reshuf­fled min­is­ters Em­manuel George and Su­ruj Ram­bachan, both men will find that they have stag­ger­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ties to sat­is­fy and many ex­pec­ta­tions to meet.In the case of Dr Ram­bachan who will, at least for now, be Min­is­ter of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment as well as Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, it will be a mat­ter of work­load.

Sat­is­fy­ing the de­mands of both, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the face of the bur­den­some de­mands of Works and In­fra­struc­ture, and the up­com­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions will de­mand much of the new­ly ap­point­ed min­is­ter.Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's strat­e­gy in man­ag­ing her Cab­i­net roles will, no doubt, have been pred­i­cat­ed on find­ing the best peo­ple avail­able for the job, but nei­ther min­istry is well served by Mr Ram­bachan's dual ap­point­ment.

It's to be hoped that the prime min­is­ter will seek a suit­able min­is­te­r­i­al ap­pointee to re­lieve Mr Ram­bachan of this crush­ing work­load and en­sure that prop­er at­ten­tion is giv­en to the de­mands of both min­istries.For Mr George, there is the mat­ter of fol­low­ing Jack Warn­er who, de­spite the cloud of ac­cu­sa­tions that re­main quite firm­ly fixed above him, was al­so both re­gard­ed and quan­tifi­ably as­sessed as the best per­form­ing min­is­ter in gov­ern­ment (MFO poll, 2011).

Act­ing Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Stephen Williams, an of­fi­cer known to be cir­cum­spect in his pub­lic ref­er­ences to politi­cians gen­er­al­ly and his line min­is­ter in par­tic­u­lar, de­scribed Mr Warn­er on Mon­day as "an ex­cep­tion­al min­is­ter and an ex­cep­tion­al leader."This from a ca­reer po­lice of­fi­cer who would rather make no com­ment than get in­volved in po­lit­i­cal joust­ing.

The in­com­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter will face con­sid­er­able chal­lenges, first bring­ing him­self up to speed with ex­ist­ing ini­tia­tives un­der­way with­in the min­istry and in han­dling del­i­cate is­sues which are al­ready in process.Yes­ter­day, Mr George found him­self in the Sen­ate plunged in­to the heat­ed de­bate on the leg­is­la­tion to pre­cept sol­diers in the fight on crime.

Oth­er mat­ters, some of them which were based on the unique and charis­mat­ic in­ter­per­son­al skills that were very much a part of Mr Warn­er's man­age­ment style, will now have to brought to an ef­fec­tive con­clu­sion by a new na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter who is very much a man of or­der, process and re­spect for the sys­tems of the pub­lic ser­vice bu­reau­cra­cy.

The na­tion is en­ti­tled to ex­pect some con­ti­nu­ity at that lev­el of gov­er­nance, and the new­ly ap­point­ed Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty will have to bring his own ap­proach to the ef­fec­tive ex­e­cu­tion of his du­ties.Un­for­tu­nate­ly, there's pre­cious lit­tle time avail­able for the type of el­e­gant ad­just­ments that both Mr George and the pub­lic might find de­sir­able and the de­mands of the an­ti-crime ini­tia­tives de­mand fast and de­ci­sive ac­tion on cur­rent is­sues.

Both Dr Ram­bachan and Mr George find them­selves walk­ing in the foot­prints of Mr Warn­er who has left be­hind quite a rep­u­ta­tion in both the works and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­istries.Their im­me­di­ate chal­lenge is to come to grips quick­ly with the con­sid­er­able de­mands of both min­istries and to put their own stamp of com­pe­tence and ac­count­abil­i­ty on the work that needs to be done in both spheres of gov­er­nance.