Mar­i­ano Browne

As we ap­proach the be­gin­ning of our six­ty-first year as an in­de­pen­dent na­tion, it is bet­ter to look for­ward than back­ward. The past can­not be changed, but go­ing for­ward we can learn from the mis­takes. But we must first ac­knowl­edge mis­takes and dis­til lessons if we are to im­prove T&T’s fu­ture. Some mis­takes have last­ing con­se­quences while oth­ers are less ob­vi­ous but no less im­por­tant. Viewed from this an­gle, po­lit­i­cal lead­ers are sim­ply trustees who con­trol state as­sets for a lim­it­ed time, with a le­gal oblig­a­tion to use those as­sets on­ly for the pur­pos­es in­tend­ed.

The Con­sti­tu­tion con­tains mech­a­nisms which vest state op­er­a­tives (the pres­i­dent, prime min­is­ter, min­is­ters, par­lia­men­tar­i­ans, and the civ­il ser­vice) with the pow­ers to act and use state re­sources for the ben­e­fit of cit­i­zens. It pre­sumes that of­fice­hold­ers would be good and ho­n­ourable peo­ple who would op­er­ate in the best in­ter­est of the cit­i­zens. As a pre­cau­tion, the Con­sti­tu­tion con­tains lim­its be­yond which of­fice­hold­ers can­not ven­ture. How­ev­er, a Con­sti­tu­tion can­not en­vis­age every even­tu­al­i­ty that may con­front the State.

An em­i­nent se­nior coun­sel re­cent­ly not­ed that of­fice­hold­ers are crea­tures of statute and lim­it­ed sole­ly to what the Con­sti­tu­tion al­lows them to do. Elect­ed of­fi­cials are re­spon­si­ble for mak­ing poli­cies and pass­ing laws for the pro­fes­sion­al ad­min­is­tra­tive ap­pa­ra­tus to im­ple­ment those poli­cies and man­age the Gov­ern­ment’s sys­tems ef­fec­tive­ly. How­ev­er, of­fice­hold­ers are hu­man and are in­flu­enced by many fac­tors, not all of which are ra­tio­nal and will there­fore make er­rors of com­mis­sion and omis­sion.

The Con­sti­tu­tion, like all laws, is mech­a­nis­tic in that it de­tails pro­ce­dures to be fol­lowed. It as­sumes hon­est, up­right, coura­geous men and women who would al­ways do their du­ty in ac­cor­dance with the law. But life is nev­er lin­ear. Of­fice­hold­ers al­so in­ter­act with each oth­er in a net­work of re­la­tion­ships, some of which are vis­i­ble. Those in­ter­ac­tions of­fer lat­i­tude for the op­er­a­tion of in­flu­ence as dis­tinct from the pow­er as­so­ci­at­ed with the of­fice.

The British com­e­dy/satir­i­cal se­ries “Yes, Prime Min­is­ter” pro­vides a hu­mor­ous view of the re­la­tion­ships and in­ter­ac­tions amongst the var­i­ous of­fice hold­ers, pub­lic ser­vants and min­is­ters por­trayed there­in. Whilst one could ar­gue that the pro­gramme is a com­e­dy and the events are pure­ly fic­tion­al, its in­sights re­flect re­al­i­ty and im­por­tant ob­ser­va­tions fol­low there­from.

In­deed, the key to an ef­fi­cient state is a strong civ­il ser­vice body. It is note­wor­thy that the cur­rent civ­il ser­vice job eval­u­a­tion ex­er­cise is the first since 1965. Much has changed in the in­ter­ven­ing 57 years, and the ex­er­cise has a myr­i­ad of im­pli­ca­tions. Nev­er­the­less, it is a pro­gres­sive step to­wards mak­ing the sys­tem work ef­fi­cient­ly. This is the type of slow, un­sexy, de­tailed work that is crit­i­cal if the coun­try’s ad­min­is­tra­tive struc­tures are to be im­proved.

The Pres­i­dent ap­points the Ser­vice Com­mis­sion mem­bers, the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and many oth­er po­si­tions, whilst the ex­ec­u­tive de­ter­mines the fi­nanc­ing for these agen­cies. Whilst the Ex­ec­u­tive (Cab­i­net) can­not legal­ly di­rect how these in­sti­tu­tions func­tion, the Ex­ec­u­tive can in­flu­ence or af­fect the op­er­a­tions of these in­sti­tu­tions by de­ter­min­ing the quan­tum of fi­nanc­ing each re­ceives. An in­sti­tu­tion can on­ly per­form those ac­tiv­i­ties or func­tions which are fund­ed.

A miss­ing fun­da­men­tal is per­for­mance man­age­ment, as what gets mea­sured gets man­aged. Do these of­fices have the right tools to per­form their tasks? What are their per­for­mance ob­jec­tives? How are they set? Who re­views their per­for­mance? What hap­pens if the per­for­mance lev­els are be­low par?

There is al­ways the pre­sump­tion that a su­per­hero would be ap­point­ed to solve all prob­lems, as ex­em­pli­fied by the re­cent im­broglio over the ap­point­ment of the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice. But hu­man be­ings are ap­point­ed with their im­per­fec­tions, not su­per­heroes.

These are sore points that have arisen con­tin­u­ous­ly in the past but have nev­er been ad­dressed. What is the pur­pose of Sec­tion 83 of the Con­sti­tu­tion, which re­quires the Prime Min­is­ter to keep the Pres­i­dent ful­ly in­formed con­cern­ing the gen­er­al con­duct of the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go and shall fur­nish the Pres­i­dent with such in­for­ma­tion as may be re­quest­ed with re­spect to any mat­ter re­lat­ing to the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go? Does this hap­pen, and what is the fol­low-up? What if the Prime Min­is­ter does not do his du­ty?

The State has many un­con­nect­ed mov­ing parts which op­er­ate in si­los rather than co­op­er­a­tive­ly. Mak­ing these parts work more har­mo­nious­ly re­quires a dif­fer­ent man­age­ment style. Will we con­tin­ue to put per­son­al­i­ties and par­ty pol­i­tics be­fore prin­ci­ples and solv­ing the na­tion’s prob­lems?