I have ob­served mem­bers of the COP ex­press­ing pub­lic opin­ions on the po­si­tions of can­di­dates in the elec­tion for po­lit­i­cal leader of the par­ty, some even by paid ad­ver­tise­ment. I have so far re­frained from do­ing so.

How­ev­er, the re­marks com­ing from one can­di­date who seems to take a de­light in op­pos­ing the po­si­tions tak­en col­lec­tive­ly by the lead­ing body of the COP, its Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive, has prompt­ed me to re­spond.

The lat­est case con­cerns the con­duct and out­come of the so-called re­align­ment of port­fo­lios of gov­ern­men­tal re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. With re­gard to the change of min­istry for one of his par­ty col­leagues, his es­sen­tial ar­gu­ment was this:

She had an ad­vis­er who was PNM and for a whole year I won­dered about that. She didn't bring any for­eign in­vest­ment in­to the coun­try. Well this is just an­oth­er ex­pres­sion of the ba­sic phi­los­o­phy which he has ex­pressed through­out his cam­paign, if it can be called a phi­los­o­phy. For him, every­thing is a mat­ter of what you can get and how the "spoils" of vic­to­ry at the polls can be di­vid­ed. So let us take his first point: she re­tained a PNM ad­vis­er. Wow! So what about his glib ref­er­ences about mer­i­toc­ra­cy and the COP core val­ues?

If some­one is ca­pa­ble of do­ing some­thing in the opin­ion of a min­is­ter who con­tin­ues his or her po­lit­i­cal ap­point­ment on that ba­sis of com­pe­tence then some­thing is wrong with that? I dare this can­di­date to point me to one doc­u­ment of Win­ston Dook­er­an, for whom he has re­cent­ly dis­cov­ered a great fond­ness, or the COP which speaks of the val­ue of po­lit­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion over mer­i­toc­ra­cy.

Or per­haps he can point to the er­rors of this ad­vis­er that led to the huge amount of in­com­pe­tence in the NP con­tract pro­ce­dure that the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al re­port­ed­ly dis­cov­ered. Mean­while he walks gin­ger­ly on the is­sues sur­round­ing an­oth­er ad­vis­er who has grabbed me­dia at­ten­tion re­cent­ly. Then he says she didn't bring any for­eign in­vest­ment in­to the coun­try. Well, who has? Be­sides, that same min­is­ter has laid the ground­work for a 2.5 per cent in­crease in the out­put of the sec­tor when the growth of the econ­o­my is ex­pect­ed to be one per cent or there­abouts for the cur­rent fis­cal year. What sin has she com­mit­ted? What is his claim to com­pe­tence in that re­gard?

It seems that the mes­sage of the Pres­i­dent in his ad­dress to Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day may have missed this can­di­date. That mes­sage in­clud­ed the pro­found points that one must not on­ly look af­ter the in­ter­est of one's own to the detri­ment of the coun­try and that politi­cians must look to the next gen­er­a­tion and not just the next elec­tion. These points I think ac­cu­rate­ly re­flect some of the COP's views on new pol­i­tics which the no­tions of po­lit­i­cal dis­crim­i­na­tion and ab­sence of mer­i­toc­ra­cy fly in the face of. What would this can­di­date do if by some chance he were to suc­ceed? Would he try to fire the Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive, who he claims to have done noth­ing in the last year?

Per­haps he should try and find out about the de­vel­op­ment of a strate­gic plan, the work to try and get the coali­tion part­ners to sit down and talk about struc­tur­ing the coali­tion it­self and con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and its work to pro­mote new stan­dards of in­tegri­ty and/or the con­duct of con­sti­tu-en­cy elec­tions across the coun­try over the last few months be­fore he seeks to diss the ex­ec­u­tive which he hopes to lead.

Clyde Weath­er­head

Sec­re­tary, Re­search &

Ed­u­ca­tion, COP