Amid the brinks­man­ship and po­lit­i­cal joust­ing that has come to char­ac­terise lo­cal par­ty pol­i­tics, Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Jack Warn­er, brought ap­pre­cia­tive tears to the face of an Op­po­si­tion PNM last week. Pa­tri­cia McIn­tosh, MP for Port-of-Spain North/St Ann's West, wept while ad­dress­ing guests at an event on Wednes­day to mark the com­ple­tion of work at the Pan­de­mo­ni­um Steel Or­ches­tra's pa­n­yard in Nor­folk Street, Bel­mont.

She re­called the pas­sion of the re­quest for help she field­ed from Pan­de­mo­ni­um mem­ber Mark Mo­hammed, which led to an as­sess­ment of is­sues with the pa­n­yard and that of Gon­za­lez Shiek­ers and the scope of the works which were need­ed. "I did not know how I would go about this or get it done," Mrs McIn­tosh con­fessed to the au­di­ence.

The Op­po­si­tion MP made it her busi­ness to find out, though, and that mis­sion took her to for­mer Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jack Warn­er. Mr Warn­er con­sid­ered her prob­lem and in­tro­duced her to Hay­den Phillip, the pro­gramme man­ag­er for the Pro­gramme for Up­grad­ing Roads Ef­fi­cien­cy (PURE).

Mr Phillips un­der­took what would be a ma­jor project of re­me­di­al works. The riv­er run­ning along­side Pan­de­mo­ni­um's pa­n­yard had sub­stan­tial­ly erod­ed the Bel­mont prop­er­ty af­ter heavy rains in 2010 and need­ed a six-me­tre-high re­tain­ing wall and con­sid­er­able fill to re­store. These works and the 400 square me­tres of land that were re­cov­ered will en­able the steel­band to ex­pand its projects in the com­mu­ni­ty.

Like many steel­bands work­ing in un­der­served com­mu­ni­ties, Pan­de­mo­ni­um and Shiek­ers work with young peo­ple and at the for­mal re­open­ing of the yard last week, young stu­dents from Bel­mont Boys' RC School and the Cas­cade Life Cen­tre were part of the ap­pre­cia­tive au­di­ence.

Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Em­manuel George was present at that cer­e­mo­ny, not­ing that small-scale projects like the re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion of the pa­n­yards were as sig­nif­i­cant as larg­er projects like the multi­bil­lion-dol­lar Point Fortin High­way be­cause they can make a dif­fer­ence in peo­ple's lives.

Not the least among those were the pan­men them­selves, who could not have mus­tered the $2.8 mil­lion it cost to re­pair these pa­n­yards and who must now ho­n­our this in­vest­ment by putting these re­fur­bished prop­er­ties to good use.

The oth­er com­mit­ment that's worth recog­nis­ing as a re­sult of this project is the suc­cess that Ms McIn­tosh en­joyed when mak­ing a case for these works to the Works Min­is­ter. In to­day's en­vi­ron­ment of out­reach and largesse that's been lav­ished on com­mu­ni­ties in Laven­tille, it's worth not­ing that this project pre­dat­ed the cur­rent fo­cus on Bel­mont by more than a year.

What it re­flects is an ex­am­ple, well worth em­u­lat­ing, of the way that gov­ern­ment should work. In the cur­rent lo­cal read­ing of the West­min­ster par­lia­men­tary sys­tem, gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion are of­ten cast in the roles of war­riors for their par­ty prin­ci­ples, each side throw­ing down for ideas that re­main dis­tant from the peo­ple they claim to help.

When Mr Warn­er gave his ap­proval for Mrs McIn­tosh's project he tram­pled ad­mirably on that sta­tus quo, bring­ing ur­gent­ly need­ed re­lief and no small mea­sure of con­fi­dence in their gov­ern­ment to the peo­ple who make reg­u­lar use of those pa­n­yard fa­cil­i­ties.

The Gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion need not be the po­lar op­po­sites that they have be­come in lo­cal pol­i­tics. Their po­si­tions should re­flect, re­spec­tive­ly, in­tent and cross-ex­am­i­na­tion in the ad­min­is­tra­tion of the busi­ness of the peo­ple and the out­come should al­ways bring val­ue to the tax­pay­ers who fund these works.

When all was said and done, every­one emerged a win­ner in these projects, which re­placed con­test and ar­gu­ment with sen­si­ble agree­ment on what was best for the com­mu­ni­ties. Clear­ly, when politi­cians hold the pub­lic they serve clear­ly in their fo­cus, good things can hap­pen. The suc­cess­ful works at Pan­de­mo­ni­um's pa­n­yard are tes­ti­mo­ny of that.