Cre­ativ­i­ty and spon­tane­ity have their role and their place, and the world is a bet­ter place be­cause of those qual­i­ties. They bring joy, life, and laugh­ter to re­lieve bore­dom and rou­tine. But peo­ple and coun­tries al­so need or­der and dis­ci­pline which are the bedrock of suc­cess in the life of every in­di­vid­ual, or­gan­i­sa­tion or so­ci­ety. Re­sources are al­ways fi­nite, and we need to find in­ge­nious ways to do more with less. But we must al­so be able to iden­ti­fy pri­or­i­ties and al­lo­cate re­sources to the most im­por­tant projects. That is the role of the Gov­ern­ment.

Last week the Prime Min­is­ter sought to em­pha­sise the im­por­tant role of lo­cal gov­ern­ment. Speak­ing at the open­ing of the new­ly re­fur­bished Skin­ner Park fa­cil­i­ty in San Fer­nan­do, the Prime Min­is­ter not­ed the im­por­tance of lo­cal gov­ern­ment bod­ies, whilst at the same time crit­i­cis­ing their per­for­mance. He stat­ed that the San Fer­nan­do City Cor­po­ra­tion and its burgess­es will be re­spon­si­ble for main­tain­ing the fa­cil­i­ty. He not­ed that fund­ing will come from two sources–tax­es on the lo­cal com­mu­ni­ty and gov­ern­ment sub­ven­tions. He de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form ini­tia­tive say­ing that lo­cal gov­ern­ment will put “se­ri­ous re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in the hands of lo­cal peo­ple.” He ques­tioned why de­trac­tors could not see that the re­forms would em­pow­er re­gion­al bod­ies not­ing that the ex­ist­ing mod­el was not work­ing.

The Prime Min­is­ter was at the same time loud in the crit­i­cism of the Diego Mar­tin Cor­po­ra­tion which is un­der the con­trol of his own par­ty. He ex­co­ri­at­ed the per­for­mance of the cor­po­ra­tion not­ing that it could not fix a land­slip af­fect­ing his home which he was forced to re­pair him­self.

All re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions, re­gard­less of po­lit­i­cal af­fil­i­a­tion, com­plained on the fol­low­ing day that they are all de­pen­dent on the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment (Cab­i­net) for the al­lo­ca­tion of funds with­out which they can­not per­form their du­ties. Cit­i­zens can­not re­move non-per­form­ing coun­cil­lors as lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions have been post­poned by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment which is led by the Prime Min­is­ter. Nei­ther can the cor­po­ra­tions raise funds on their own as the leg­isla­tive arrange­ments put that pow­er in the hands of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. Fur­ther, any re­forms are al­so at the be­hest of the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, as is the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the prop­er­ty tax.

One strug­gled to un­der­stand the rea­son for the Prime Min­is­ter’s out­burst. Was he at­tack­ing the lead­er­ship of the Diego Mar­tin Cor­po­ra­tion for not re­spond­ing to his per­son­al in­ter­ests, mak­ing the case for the im­ple­men­ta­tion of the prop­er­ty tax, or lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form in gen­er­al? A more cyn­i­cal pos­si­bil­i­ty is that his com­ments, com­ing so close as they did to the re­turn of the prodi­gal “Naipaul-Cool­man file,” might have been in­tend­ed to change the nar­ra­tive and re­move the fo­cus from the be­lea­guered at­tor­ney gen­er­al. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, he suc­cess­ful­ly dis­tract­ed at­ten­tion from the en­er­gy min­is­ter’s vis­it to Venezuela. What was the vis­it in­tend­ed to achieve?

Progress is made by con­sis­tent, dis­ci­plined steps to achieve an ob­jec­tive. Whilst the Prime Min­is­ter’s com­ments did get at­ten­tion, it is un­clear which ob­jec­tive was ad­vanced. In any event, the pub­lic’s thirst for spon­tane­ity and cre­ativ­i­ty will be bet­ter sat­is­fied by the con­tes­tants at the Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta held at Skin­ner Park this week­end.