Man­ag­ing a coun­try’s af­fairs is com­pli­cat­ed. Cen­tral to this task is the idea that a coun­try should be run by those with the great­est ca­pac­i­ty to gov­ern ef­fec­tive­ly. This pre­sumes that the lead­ers se­lect­ed will have the rel­e­vant ex­pe­ri­ence, ex­per­tise and a strong un­der­stand­ing of the com­plex is­sues in­volved in man­ag­ing a coun­try, which should lead to bet­ter poli­cies and there­fore bet­ter out­comes for its cit­i­zens.

This im­plies a mer­i­to­crat­ic ap­proach where lead­er­ship is earned through demon­strat­ed abil­i­ty rather than birthright, race, colour or pop­u­lar­i­ty.

The Con­sti­tu­tion sets no ed­u­ca­tion­al or ex­pe­ri­ence pre­qual­i­fi­ca­tion for a prime min­is­ter or a min­is­ter. Nei­ther does any po­lit­i­cal par­ty. Po­lit­i­cal par­ties sim­ply re­quire that a po­lit­i­cal leader be elect­ed from their mem­bers and that the leader has the ma­jor­i­ty sup­port of the elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives through a struc­tured vot­ing process.

The on­ly mech­a­nism to en­sure that the best peo­ple are se­lect­ed for hold­ing of­fice is the judge­ment and good sense of its cit­i­zens through the elec­tion process and that those po­lit­i­cal lead­ers can com­mand the sup­port of the ma­jor­i­ty of those elect­ed to Par­lia­ment.

In mul­ti­cul­tur­al so­ci­eties, the ties that bind are el­e­men­tal. Race or eth­nic­i­ty, class, and cul­tur­al or re­li­gious ties will all in­flu­ence the se­lec­tion process in so­cio-po­lit­i­cal in­sti­tu­tions. Trinidad and To­ba­go is no dif­fer­ent from any oth­er coun­try in this re­gard. What is im­por­tant is how those is­sues are ad­dressed in the pub­lic do­main and whether those in­flu­ences are strong enough to de­feat the prin­ci­ple of mer­i­toc­ra­cy and com­pe­tence as cri­te­ria in the se­lec­tion of peo­ple to man­age or over­see the pletho­ra of in­sti­tu­tions re­quired by the State to car­ry out the busi­ness of gov­ern­ment.

Last week, rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties trad­ed ac­cu­sa­tions and counter-ac­cu­sa­tions of bias in the ap­point­ment of di­rec­tors to the boards of state en­ter­pris­es and statu­to­ry cor­po­ra­tions. A change of gov­ern­ment gives the win­ning par­ty an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­ward its sup­port­ers us­ing the re­sources of the State.

De­spite claims of even­hand­ed­ness, the re­al­i­ty is that po­lit­i­cal favours are paid with State re­sources, not from politi­cians’ pock­ets. The de­bate ig­nored the moral dilem­ma which jus­ti­fies the di­vi­sion of po­lit­i­cal spoils based on par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion and, by ex­ten­sion, race. This al­so ex­ists in the shad­owy world of so­cial pro­grammes such as CEPEP (Com­mu­ni­ty-Based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme), URP (Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme) and school feed­ing, by which those on the mar­gins are re­ward­ed.

Miss­ing from the the­atre and the dra­ma was any strong ac­knowl­edge­ment that the pub­lic in­ter­est re­quired an em­pha­sis on com­pe­tence and ca­pac­i­ty to en­sure that the pub­lic re­ceives val­ue in the man­age­ment of the State’s as­sets and the pub­lic purse. In­stead of fo­cus­ing on the ca­pac­i­ty of the peo­ple ap­point­ed to var­i­ous po­si­tions, the com­par­isons de­scend­ed to the puerile ex­er­cise of count­ing the racial com­po­si­tion of the boards, how many In­di­ans com­pared to how many Africans.

In the process, the prin­ci­ple of good gov­ern­ment was lost.

The coun­try faces com­plex is­sues and dif­fi­cult de­ci­sions. The coun­try is age­ing; its so­cial se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem is creak­ing, and crime, crim­i­nal­i­ty, and vi­o­lence are ex­is­ten­tial threats, as is cli­mate change.

Eco­nom­ic growth is slow, the fis­cal deficit is grow­ing, and there are sig­nif­i­cant chal­lenges that must be over­come if the coun­try is to main­tain a de­cent liv­ing stan­dard. Our minds should be fo­cused on de­ploy­ing the com­pe­tence to help the coun­try over­come these chal­lenges.