Shal­iza?Has­sanali

For­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing yes­ter­day gave the Gov­ern­ment a fail­ing grade on their per­for­mance af­ter a year in of­fice. To­day marks one year since the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led ad­min­is­tra­tion was vot­ed in­to of­fice.

Over the week­end, the Sun­day Guardian pub­lished the re­sult of an on­line poll which showed that 65.66 per cent of those can­vassed were "very dis­sat­is­fied" with the Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance, with 12.70 per cent in­di­cat­ing they were "some­what dis­sat­is­fied."

An­oth­er 6.35 per cent of the re­spon­dents said they were "very sat­is­fied," while 7.91 per cent were "some­what sat­is­fied" and 7.39 per cent were "nei­ther sat­is­fied nor dis­sat­is­fied."

Lee Sing was one of five peo­ple who as­sessed the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's per­for­mance. With ten be­ing the high­est rat­ing, Lee Sing, who re­signed from the PNM last year, gave the ad­min­is­tra­tion "a four."

He said there was no con­science in the cur­rent Cab­i­net and the "Prime Min­is­ter had de­lib­er­ate­ly as­sem­bled a team of peo­ple who would de­mand noth­ing of him. Be­cause they could de­mand noth­ing of him, they can't de­mand any­thing of them­selves and so they are un­able to do any­thing that sparks...pre­cise­ly be­cause they are no sparks around their leader."

It was clear the ma­jor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion were dis­sat­is­fied in the ar­eas of health, crime, labour, hous­ing, for­eign af­fairs and en­er­gy, he not­ed.

Lee Sing said rather than look at the coun­try's for­eign ex­change earn­ings and try to gen­er­ate do­mes­tic rev­enue, the Gov­ern­ment's plan was to sit, wait and hope that en­er­gy prices would sky­rock­et to turn around the econ­o­my.

He al­so crit­i­cised the PM's reg­u­lar over­sea trips, stat­ing as a leader he should be an­chored with his Cab­i­net.

As­sess­ing the per­for­mance of min­is­ters, Lee Sing said he was dis­ap­point­ed in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon.

"To me, Dil­lon has not come to grips with the dif­fer­ence be­tween run­ning a con­trolled en­vi­ron­ment and run­ning an en­vi­ron­ment where every­thing is out of con­trol. They have to un­der­stand that the buck stops with them. They have to find ways and means to get the job done," Lee Sing added.

He al­so con­demned the per­for­mance of En­er­gy Min­is­ter Nicole Olivierre.

"We do not have an En­er­gy Min­is­ter. In the con­text of Trinidad and To­ba­go, the En­er­gy Min­is­ter is the czar of the re­gion. I don't even know that this la­dy (Olivierre) ex­ists. And even if she says some­thing it amounts to noth­ing," he added.

Lee Sing sug­gest­ed that Row­ley re­con­fig­ure the Cab­i­net to 16 min­is­ters, with each min­is­ter be­ing as­signed a ju­nior min­is­ter to help out. He gave Min­is­ters Sham­fa Cud­joe, Den­nis Moses, Ran­dall Mitchell, Fitzger­ald Hinds, Jen­nifer Bap­tiste-Primus, Dil­lon and Olivierre fail­ing grades but felt there was al­so room for im­prove­ment in health, ed­u­ca­tion, fi­nance and agri­cul­ture.

Lee Sing ques­tioned if Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert would be bet­ter suit­ed in Works and Trans­port, while Mar­i­ano Browne, a for­mer min­is­ter, would be bet­ter to man­age the Fi­nance Min­istry.

In go­ing for­ward, Lee Sing said Row­ley had to take the bull by the horns by work­ing and guid­ing his "in­ex­pe­ri­enced" Cab­i­net, oth­er­wise they would re­peat the er­ror of the past.

Maraj: Grit and courage re­quired

For­mer for­eign af­fairs min­is­ter Ralph Maraj said the econ­o­my and crime were two ar­eas the Gov­ern­ment col­lapsed on. He said the coun­try had not seen much move­ment in ad­just­ments, new earn­ings and the re­struc­tur­ing of the econ­o­my.

Maraj said the Gov­ern­ment al­so need­ed to look crit­i­cal­ly at the ex­change rate, which should be al­lowed to slide fur­ther while not much had been done in di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion to­wards new earn­ings. An­oth­er is­sue not ad­dressed, he said, was the ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion of state en­ter­pris­es to en­sure ac­count­abil­i­ty and trans­paren­cy.

While he praised Row­ley for call­ing on di­vi­sion­al po­lice heads to be sher­iffs in their ar­eas, he said Row­ley need­ed fol­low-up meet­ings every month with these heads to get up­dates on de­vel­op­ments.

In do­ing that, Maraj said Row­ley would en­gen­der a cul­ture of lead­er­ship and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty which was what was re­quired to re­duce crime.

He, how­ev­er, com­mend­ed Im­bert, say­ing he had done rel­a­tive­ly well for some­one who was in­ex­pe­ri­enced in fi­nance.

"What is re­quired is the grit and courage to make tough de­ci­sions. That is what has been lack­ing and as a re­sult we have not seen any move­ment to­wards the chal­lenges we have be­fore us," he added.

Fer­reira: A year spent detox­i­fy­ing

Found­ing PNM mem­ber Fer­die Fer­reira said it seemed the Gov­ern­ment spent its first year detox­i­fy­ing.

As a po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst, how­ev­er, Fer­reira, 89, said for the last year the coun­try had seen more ac­count­abil­i­ty, while wastage was sig­nif­i­cant­ly re­duced.

"The ma­jor part of the Gov­ern­ment in the last year was pay­ing bills or try­ing to cor­rect what went wrong. I don't think peo­ple re­al­ly un­der­stand the mag­ni­tude of the dis­as­ter the Gov­ern­ment faced when they came in­to of­fice."

But Fer­reira re­fused to as­sess the min­is­ters' in­di­vid­ual per­for­mances.

"The prob­lem with prime min­is­ters is the ques­tion of judg­ment. Peo­ple might be aca­d­e­m­i­cal­ly qual­i­fied for a job but in some cas­es they don't fit in... they are not politi­cians. I think one of the prob­lems is that with a team of so many new­com­ers, ob­vi­ous­ly... a lot of them with­out any po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence... it would take them some time to be­come po­lit­i­cal­ly ac­cli­ma­tised."

He said some­times min­is­ters did per­form but lack of po­lit­i­cal flare would give the pub­lic the im­pres­sion that he/she was in­com­pe­tent or in­ca­pable of han­dling their job.

Teelucks­ingh: Horse bolt­ed on crime

For­mer in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor, Rev Daniel Teelucks­ingh, said crime should have been ad­dressed from day one by the Gov­ern­ment with stake­hold­ers from dif­fer­ent quar­ters.

"You let a year pass. The horse has al­ready bolt­ed. You wait so long. This should have been the first thing this Gov­ern­ment should have done.

"They have in­her­it­ed a na­tion that is rid­dled by crime. I don't think they know how to deal with this very se­ri­ous prob­lem with the close con­nec­tion be­tween crime, the nar­cotics trade and the high preva­lence of guns in T&T," he said.

Teelucks­ingh gave the Gov­ern­ment a thumbs down for not open­ing the Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal in Cou­va yet, say­ing cit­i­zens were suf­fer­ing for prop­er health care while the build­ing was go­ing to waste.

"That hos­pi­tal does not be­long to the PP nor PNM gov­ern­ment. It be­longs to the peo­ple... and many peo­ple have been ask­ing if it has be­come an in­stru­ment in a po­lit­i­cal game," he said.

On the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a Cab­i­net reshuf­fle, Teelucks­ingh said it was im­pos­si­ble for an OJT min­is­ter to learn their job in one year.

"I do not be­lieve in any overnight shuf­fle of a Cab­i­net. What the Gov­ern­ment has to do is op­er­ate in con­sor­tium with their man­i­festo, plans and poli­cies and work to­wards that. I would be very gra­cious to­wards any gov­ern­ment in their first year and give them a chance."

Ford: Cab­i­net will lis­ten to pop­u­la­tion

Yes­ter­day, PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford said when the PNM came in­to of­fice they were faced with an emp­ty Trea­sury and had to cut ex­pen­di­ture due to falling oil prices.

He said it was dif­fi­cult to un­der­stand how some sec­tors of the pub­lic ex­pect­ed the Gov­ern­ment to achieve a high lev­el of de­liv­ery when the rev­enue from oil dropped from US$120 to $26 a bar­rel.

"It is in­con­sis­tent with rea­son. You can't ask more with less. You could not ask the Fi­nance Min­is­ter to be reck­less with his spend­ing," Ford said, prais­ing Im­bert for han­dling the econ­o­my pru­dent­ly.

Asked if an in­ex­pe­ri­enced Cab­i­net had cre­at­ed some set­backs for the Gov­ern­ment, Ford re­fused to say.

"That is the Prime Min­is­ter's call. He is the one to as­sess them and to make a judg­ment call in the per­for­mance of the min­is­ters."

In the com­ing year, Ford said the Gov­ern­ment would lis­ten to the pop­u­la­tion's views.

"The Cab­i­net will al­so ad­just the neg­a­tives and im­prove on the pos­i­tives," he added.