Tak­ing up a new as­sign­ment al­ways brings sur­pris­es, no mat­ter how well one plans for the job. Tak­ing charge of a new gov­ern­ment is even more chal­leng­ing.

Po­lit­i­cal man­i­festos ad­dress na­tion­al prob­lems in gen­er­al terms and give broad state­ments of in­tent. How­ev­er, tak­ing up min­is­te­r­i­al of­fice brings min­is­ters face to face with the spe­cif­ic is­sues and their unique cir­cum­stances and the con­straints of of­fice in de­ploy­ing pre-pack­aged so­lu­tions.

There is nev­er a short­age of op­er­a­tional crises to be ad­dressed, and there is al­ways the temp­ta­tion to be con­sumed by the PR. Set­tling in takes time, as does dis­tin­guish­ing be­tween what is ur­gent and what is im­por­tant.

This new ad­min­is­tra­tion is com­ing to terms with the enor­mi­ty of the tasks it is con­fronting. Ad­dress­ing the coun­try’s fi­nances will be a crit­i­cal as­pect of this process.

Ur­gent de­mands and re­quests abound, and re­sources are scarce. These de­mands must be pri­ori­tised be­fore they are ad­dressed. The midyear bud­get re­view will be an im­por­tant mile­stone in this ex­er­cise, as it will pro­vide the new ad­min­is­tra­tion with the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­al­is­ti­cal­ly as­sess the fi­nan­cial po­si­tion. That will be the easy part.

Whilst in op­po­si­tion, some of the new min­is­ters de­tect­ed and com­plained of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion’s weak­ness­es and ex­cess­es. Now, the cur­rent Cab­i­net owns the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for ad­dress­ing and pro­vid­ing so­lu­tions to those chal­lenges. There is al­ways the ten­den­cy to blame cur­rent chal­lenges on the fail­ings of the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion.

US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump con­tin­u­ous­ly claims that the war in Ukraine is not his do­ing, there­by at­tempt­ing to avoid re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, whether it was his do­ing or not, as Pres­i­dent, he must now deal with it.

The same is true for this ad­min­is­tra­tion. The pub­lic will have some em­pa­thy for this ad­min­is­tra­tion’s “new­ness”. It will en­joy pop­u­lar sup­port for a pe­ri­od, but that good­will will not last for­ev­er.

The ra­tio­nale for re­mov­ing the last ad­min­is­tra­tion was to give the new min­is­ters the chance to bring a fresh ap­proach. Cit­i­zens ex­pect some nam­ing, blam­ing, and sham­ing. But there is a lim­it to that ap­proach.

The last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion spent too much time blam­ing the pre­vi­ous Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar regime for its in­her­i­tance and not enough time ad­dress­ing what it could do. Re­peat­ing the PNM’s fol­ly would be a grave mis­take.

The 2026 an­nu­al bud­get ex­er­cise start­ed in April. Now is the time to ar­tic­u­late this ad­min­is­tra­tion’s agen­da and demon­strate its com­mit­ment to deep and mean­ing­ful changes rather than mere lip ser­vice and rhetoric.

It is the ide­al op­por­tu­ni­ty to match cam­paign promis­es with the avail­able re­sources and demon­strate the ma­tu­ri­ty to ar­tic­u­late any new di­rec­tion. As­sess­ing the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial re­quire­ments and its debt ser­vice ca­pac­i­ty is a cru­cial part of this ex­er­cise.

Tak­ing charge al­so in­volves se­lect­ing peo­ple to man­age state en­ter­pris­es. This ex­er­cise re­quires tact, pru­dence, and an em­pha­sis on the skill sets vi­tal to achiev­ing na­tion­al ob­jec­tives.

There may be a hu­man ten­den­cy to dis­pense po­lit­i­cal pa­tron­age or to view out­go­ing di­rec­tors as hav­ing ben­e­fit­ted from such pa­tron­age. How­ev­er, our lead­ers need to re­mem­ber that state re­sources are part of the na­tion­al pat­ri­mo­ny and do not be­long to any po­lit­i­cal par­ty. Na­tion­al ob­jec­tives take prece­dence over nar­row po­lit­i­cal ob­jec­tives.

Con­se­quent­ly, the most im­por­tant cri­te­ria for ap­point­ment to any or­gan­i­sa­tion in which the State has an in­ter­est should be com­pe­tence and ca­pac­i­ty, not po­lit­i­cal loy­al­ty.