Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les is ques­tion­ing why Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Roger Alexan­der has been put in charge of mat­ters in the Pris­ons Ser­vice, when Alexan­der has not ad­dressed al­le­ga­tions in the pub­lic do­main about vis­its to the pris­ons to meet cer­tain in­mates. He is al­so ques­tion­ing if there are prob­lems with­in Gov­ern­ment which prompt­ed the changes.

“Peo­ple were ex­pect­ing a date for de­liv­ery of the 2026 bud­get—not changes in port­fo­lios,” Gon­za­les said yes­ter­day re­gard­ing the re­as­sign­ing of sev­er­al min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios, in­clud­ing Alexan­der’s.

“These changes are a clear sign of in­ter­nal in­sta­bil­i­ty in the Gov­ern­ment just five months in­to of­fice, and the Prime Min­is­ter is try­ing to man­age,” Gon­za­les charged.

Yes­ter­day, shifts were made in 10 min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios where the rel­e­vant min­is­ters re­ceived ex­pand­ed re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

Changes were al­so made to port­fo­lios of eight min­is­ters where cer­tain re­spon­si­bil­i­ties were shift­ed to oth­er min­is­ters. The ad­just­ments were Gazetted on Sat­ur­day evening and made pub­lic yes­ter­day.

“The Prime Min­is­ter main­tains the pre­rog­a­tive to make changes to Cab­i­net port­fo­lios, but just five months in­to of­fice, dur­ing which she in­stalled the largest Cab­i­net with many min­is­ters re­ceiv­ing salaries yet spend­ing more time blog­ging, we’re now see­ing changes in min­is­te­r­i­al port­fo­lios, like Fi­nance Min­is­ter (Dave) Tan­coo be­ing stripped of key re­spon­si­bil­i­ties like the Val­u­a­tion Di­vi­sion, and oth­er min­is­ters stripped of the Self-Help pro­gramme and Lands.

“So clear­ly there’s more in the prover­bial mor­tar than the pes­tle. For in­stance, how come the Min­is­ter of Jus­tice isn’t re­spon­si­ble for crim­i­nal jus­tice?” Gon­za­les added.

“Al­so, is the Prime Min­is­ter go­ing to be hands-on enough to mon­i­tor the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Hous­ing and Vil­lage Im­prove­ment Pro­gramme? Will she be mak­ing reg­u­lar vis­its to these com­mu­ni­ties where the pro­gramme is be­ing im­ple­ment­ed?”

Not­ing the re­moval of land man­age­ment and oth­er items from Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Ravi Rati­ram’s port­fo­lio, Gon­za­les said, “I don’t know what is left in the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry for Ravi Rati­ram to do. The Prime Min­is­ter should tell the coun­try what he’s re­al­ly be­ing paid to do in the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry.”

PM con­trols pa­tron­age

– Ra­goonath

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said that while some port­fo­lio changes can be de­scribed as fine-tun­ing the work of the re­spec­tive min­istries, there are some crit­i­cal changes.

Ra­goonath added, “To start with, the Prime Min­is­ter is tak­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for Self-Help and so­cial grants. It was clear that un­der the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment, there were con­cerns about how Self-Help was dis­trib­uted, par­tic­u­lar­ly as elec­tions ap­proached.

“The PM has de­cid­ed that this will now fall un­der her of­fice, and that is crit­i­cal in de­ter­min­ing who gets what. More im­por­tant­ly, with her be­ing the one to dis­pense, it takes away from oth­er min­is­ters who may have been seen to have the pow­er of pa­tron­age. But are we sure it is the PM who will de­ter­mine who gets what, when, and how?”

He said the oth­er ma­jor change is with the re­nam­ing of the Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries Min­istry, and that the min­istry is los­ing con­trol over land man­age­ment.

Ra­goonath asked, “Does this im­ply that the Agri­cul­ture Min­istry will fo­cus on­ly on food, and does this point to what we can ex­pect in the bud­get? Tak­ing away land man­age­ment and plac­ing it with Le­gal Af­fairs is prob­a­bly an at­tempt to fast-track is­sues re­lat­ed to state land dis­tri­b­u­tion.”

Ra­goonath al­so not­ed, “There have al­so been ques­tions in the pub­lic do­main re­cent­ly on whether the Es­tate Man­age­ment Busi­ness De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (EM­BD) will con­tin­ue its case against some con­trac­tors whom the PNM had hauled be­fore the courts. Le­gal Af­fairs, where EM­BD falls, will now have to deal with that.”