Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts are de­scrib­ing the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion to re­as­sign the re­spon­si­bil­i­ties of more than 10 Gov­ern­ment min­istries as a sign of dis­sat­is­fac­tion with some of her min­is­ters’ per­for­mance.

The move comes less than two months af­ter she de­liv­ered a fiery warn­ing to her min­is­ters.

The re­as­sign­ment, for­mal­ly pub­lished in the Trinidad and To­ba­go Gazette on Sat­ur­day evening, fol­lows Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s 100-day ad­dress in which she is­sued a stern mes­sage to Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials about in­tegri­ty and loy­al­ty.

At the time, the Prime Min­is­ter had warned against cor­rupt prac­tices and align­ment with mem­bers of the op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment. She threat­ened to “buss” their heads, adding:

“All the things some of you did and think you get away in 2010–2015 will not be re­peat­ed. It seems some peo­ple have not learnt any­thing in the last ten years… this is a warn­ing, the 100-day warn­ing, straight­en up, fix your­self, be­have your­self, too many thou­sands of per­sons are de­pend­ing on us.”

Her first set of re­as­sign­ments was for­mal­ly ap­proved by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo with ef­fect from Oc­to­ber 3, act­ing on the Prime Min­is­ter’s ad­vice un­der Sec­tion 79(1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion.

Ear­ly warn­ing or in­ner cir­cle?

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed de­scribed the changes as a “re­align­ment” rather than a full reshuf­fle, sug­gest­ing the move re­flects the Prime Min­is­ter’s dis­sat­is­fac­tion with some min­is­ters’ per­for­mance.

“So, this is an ear­ly warn­ing. ‘If you don’t be­lieve that I was ob­serv­ing you in the last six months, here’s your no­tice. And I have tak­en no­tice of where the weak­ness­es are, what needs to be re­aligned, what needs to be fixed’, be­cause we have to take in­to con­sid­er­a­tion as well— you win gov­ern­ment, one. You cre­ate a Cab­i­net, two. You have to now fo­cus on the sched­ules and what you want, who to hold where, and see how it works in three months, in six months. That’s a good, smart tool­ing ap­proach.”

He dis­missed spec­u­la­tion that Per­sad-Bisses­sar was form­ing an in­ner Cab­i­net, say­ing, “I don’t be­lieve we are go­ing to see the for­ma­tion of a ca­bal that is go­ing to spin the Prime Min­is­ter in­to a web.”

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Win­ford James warned that the re­as­sign­ments could raise doubts about Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s de­ci­sion-mak­ing and her grasp of min­is­te­r­i­al ca­pac­i­ty.

“It’s giv­ing us a very un­com­fort­able sense. The Prime Min­is­ter may not be ful­ly aware of the ca­pa­bil­i­ties of the peo­ple she has to dis­trib­ute among re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and min­istries... Now, that could af­fect the con­fi­dence in our lead­er­ship.”

He al­so crit­i­cised the ab­sence of wider con­sul­ta­tion.

“The fact that we vot­ed you in­to pow­er does not mean that you shouldn’t con­tin­ue to seek our guid­ance, what we might wish to say. It’s bet­ter for gov­er­nance over­all. But if she keeps do­ing what you have re­port­ed that she has done, then it’s go­ing to af­fect the trust of the pub­lic, the pub­lic’s con­fi­dence in her abil­i­ty to lead.”

‘A dis­trac­tion prime min­is­ter’

A po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor, who re­quest­ed anonymi­ty, said the re­as­sign­ment sig­nals Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s ad­mis­sion that her ini­tial Cab­i­net choic­es may have fall­en short.

“Be­cause if you knew what kind of gov­er­nance you were look­ing for, you would find the most ap­pro­pri­ate per­son,” the an­a­lyst said.

The com­men­ta­tor sug­gest­ed the changes point to the emer­gence of an in­for­mal in­ner cir­cle.

“We’re see­ing sym­bols, pub­lic sym­bols, that sug­gest the for­ma­tion or the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an in­ner Cab­i­net... that there is an ero­sion of con­fi­dence of cer­tain min­is­ters to de­liv­er what the Prime Min­is­ter ex­pects.”

The com­men­ta­tor added: “She can be de­scribed as a dis­trac­tion Prime Min­is­ter who us­es the prin­ci­ples of dis­trac­tion to cov­er up the in­abil­i­ty to de­liv­er a dif­fer­ent gov­er­nance.”

The com­men­ta­tor re­ferred to the bud­get not be­ing called up to yes­ter­day evening, and the re­la­tions with Venezuela as is­sues the Prime Min­is­ter hoped to move the pub­lic’s at­ten­tion away from.

Be­tween 2010 and 2015, Per­sad-Bisses­sar made nine Cab­i­net ad­just­ments dur­ing her pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion, ac­cord­ing to po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Pro­fes­sor Hamid Ghany in a Guardian ed­i­to­r­i­al pub­lished on Sep­tem­ber 11, 2016.