There will al­ways be op­er­a­tional chal­lenges and pol­i­cy is­sues that must be ad­dressed in man­ag­ing an or­gan­i­sa­tion or in man­ag­ing a coun­try. Last week pre­sent­ed many ex­am­ples of fun­da­men­tal is­sues that must be ad­dressed.

The 2024 Bud­get de­bate skirt­ed any re­al so­lu­tions to ad­dress the deep­er un­der­ly­ing con­di­tions. It did not ad­dress how adding 1,000 more po­lice re­cruits would im­prove the crime-fight­ing ca­pac­i­ty of the TTPS if its op­er­at­ing struc­ture is not im­proved or the ju­di­cial sys­tem made more ef­fi­cient. Whilst the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter’s apol­o­gy did car­ry some sem­blance of an ac­cep­tance of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to cit­i­zens in ad­dress­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion, he failed to go be­yond the lev­el of a weak ges­ture.

On Wednes­day last, a vi­o­lent at­tack on Prison Ser­vice per­son­nel sig­nalled that crim­i­nal op­er­a­tions can be mas­ter­mind­ed from with­in prison walls. In the last 30 years, more than 22 prison of­fi­cers have lost their lives to gun­men. On the same day, the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er an­nounced the re­cov­ery of a cache of arms and am­mu­ni­tion af­ter months of sur­veil­lance work and in­tel­li­gence gath­er­ing. In ad­di­tion to the seizure of arms and am­mu­ni­tion, the “re­al” find ought to have been the cap­ture of the peo­ple re­spon­si­ble for im­port­ing the guns and the im­por­ta­tion routes. Were the po­lice too quick to claim cred­it when the greater task is to erad­i­cate the source of sup­ply? If the source is not erad­i­cat­ed, then more guns will come to re­place those that were seized.

Crime cri­sis talks are not new. In 2020, the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty met with var­i­ous stake­hold­ers which in­clud­ed busi­ness groups and a se­lect­ed group of stu­dents from ter­tiary and sec­ondary in­sti­tu­tions. Press re­ports quot­ed the min­is­ter as say­ing the talks were “suc­cess­ful, fruit­ful, and in­sight­ful” mean­ing there was no re­al out­come. The cur­rent talks as pro­posed will be be­tween a team of par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, with the Gov­ern­ment team con­sist­ing of five, with four rep­re­sent­ing the Op­po­si­tion with de­ci­sions tak­en by a ma­jor­i­ty vote, thus guar­an­tee­ing sta­sis.

In Par­lia­ment, the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter ad­vanced the case for wa­ter for all in 2024 be­cause of the pro­posed im­ple­men­ta­tion of an­oth­er WASA re­struc­tur­ing plan. He has pre­vi­ous­ly tout­ed the ca­pac­i­ty of WASA’s drilling pro­gramme to re­place the use of “ex­pen­sive” de­sali­nat­ed wa­ter. Per­haps he should have lis­tened more at­ten­tive­ly to Min­is­ter Young’s de­fence of the re­al rea­sons for the clo­sure of Petrotrin since he will soon have to ex­plain how recre­at­ing WASA will yield bet­ter wa­ter dis­tri­b­u­tion.

Then there was the unan­i­mous de­ci­sion of the Ap­peal Court to re­in­state Mar­cia Ay­ers-Cae­sar. The judges con­clud­ed that the Ju­di­cial and Le­gal Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (JLSC) had act­ed un­law­ful­ly in “seek­ing and procur­ing her res­ig­na­tion”. It not­ed that the let­ter of res­ig­na­tion was pro­cured by the il­le­gal con­duct of the Com­mis­sion, a body head­ed by the Ho­n­ourable Chief Jus­tice. No one is above the law and the Ap­peal Court judges must be com­mend­ed for their in­de­pen­dence in mak­ing such a de­ci­sion which does not re­flect well on the JLSC or the Chief Jus­tice who ought to know bet­ter.

In 2020, there was an ac­ri­mo­nious ex­change be­tween the CJ and the DPP. Yet many of the DPP’s com­ments and crit­i­cisms were repli­cat­ed in the CJ’s speech at the re­cent open­ing of the law term.

Con­nect­ing these dis­parate events is the is­sue of lead­er­ship or lack there­of.