More than a few years ago, I sug­gest­ed a Cab­i­net of tech­nocrats se­lect­ed for the spe­cialised skills they can bring to a gov­ern­ment and gov­er­nance. The most co­gent of rea­sons for the sug­ges­tion is that a Cab­i­net com­pris­ing such skills and with­out be­ing a crea­ture of a po­lit­i­cal par­ty and trib­al al­le­giances can, at least, have a deep ap­pre­ci­a­tion for the des­per­ate need for qual­i­ty gov­er­nance in the ar­eas crit­i­cal to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment, in­deed sur­vival.

One ma­jor rea­son for the gen­er­al­ly ac­knowl­edged prob­lems seem­ing to be with­out so­lu­tion, in­deed for­ev­er ex­pand­ing and deep­en­ing, re­volves around the re­al­i­ty of an elec­torate which votes for the can­di­dates of po­lit­i­cal par­ties who, in the main, do not match the skills and ex­pe­ri­ence re­quired in the Cab­i­net of Trinidad and To­ba­go and the world of the 21st cen­tu­ry.

As can be ex­pect­ed, those who are very adept at weav­ing a spell of in­flu­ence amongst the elec­torate by thun­der­ing against those of the oth­er par­ty and en­gag­ing “free sheet” in pi­cong and mau­vais langue, de­grad­ing each oth­er, scream­ing and re­peat­ing al­le­ga­tions of fraud and cor­rup­tion against the oth­er par­ty and its mem­bers, and chok­ing the cam­paign dis­course with false promis­es which can­not be re­alised, are not se­ri­ous min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­dates.

The out­come of fol­low­ing such a sys­tem of elect­ing min­is­ters is that “when the elec­tion come and pass”, and prime min­is­ters have to find the skills, dis­po­si­tions and ex­pe­ri­ence to give min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to se­lect­ed ones of the suc­cess­ful can­di­dates, they are left with a se­ri­ous deficit of tal­ent and ex­pe­ri­ence; sen­a­tors can­not out-po­si­tion elect­ed mem­bers.

What is even more trou­bling is that even the prime min­is­ters elect­ed to lead, in many in­stances, do not them­selves have the deep in­sight in­to the so­lu­tions need­ed and the proven skills to lead a cab­i­net to se­cure what is re­quired.

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning once se­lect­ed a min­is­ter of ex­ter­nal af­fairs on the ba­sis that he was bright and that, in fact, all that was need­ed was to have a quick mind; he even once placed a hote­lier in the po­si­tion of min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.

Even in the in­stances in which the Con­sti­tu­tion re­quires that an at­tor­ney gen­er­al be an at­tor­ney, there have been those who have not met the re­quire­ments. One at­tor­ney giv­en the job of AG found him­self in a tight spot, short of the knowl­edge to pro­vide leg­isla­tive guid­ance to counter crim­i­nal­i­ty; he took refuge in the fact that he was not a reg­u­lar par­tic­i­pant at the crim­i­nal bar.

Of our prime min­is­ters over the pre- and post-in­de­pen­dence pe­ri­od, on­ly his­to­ri­an Dr Er­ic Williams as prime min­is­ter with a deep knowl­edge of the sweep of British rule and the prob­lems left be­hind which need­ed to be ad­dressed frontal­ly had any­thing re­sem­bling what was re­quired knowl­edge to counter colo­nial­ism. At a crit­i­cal point, he es­tab­lished an in­dus­tri­al es­tate and a pro­gramme to as­sist the econ­o­my to be moved away from sug­ar pro­duc­tion.

Williams’ un­der­stand­ing of the skills and ca­pac­i­ty re­quired in the Cab­i­net to trans­form the na­tion sought un­suc­cess­ful­ly to re­move can­di­dates Brense­ly Bar­row, Carl­ton Gomes, Sham Mo­hammed and Li­onel Robin­son from the par­ty’s list. How­ev­er, with the pow­er to de­ter­mine who should be in the Cab­i­net, he ig­nored the elect­ed “mill­stones”. How­ev­er, Dr Williams left be­hind many un­fin­ished jobs.

Yes, there should be rep­re­sen­ta­tives of the peo­ple in their con­stituen­cies in the Par­lia­ment, but that should be the to­tal­i­ty of their func­tion­ing. They will do so in Lloyd Best’s “Ma­co” Par­lia­ment to make known the as­sis­tance re­quired and to bring the con­cerns of those they rep­re­sent to the at­ten­tion of the Cab­i­net and the leg­isla­tive body.

With re­gard to the se­lec­tion and for­ma­tion of a Cab­i­net, Patrick Man­ning, when he was prime min­is­ter, ad­vo­cat­ed that the leader of the par­ty which wins the elec­tion should then be el­e­vat­ed to the po­si­tion of Pres­i­dent of the Re­pub­lic to ap­point a Cab­i­net. Such an ini­tia­tive will take us back to the same par­ty rule and an ex­ec­u­tive with­out the nec­es­sary skills and ex­pe­ri­ence to gov­ern and trans­form the econ­o­my and so­ci­ety and look af­ter the needs of the na­tion.

My rec­om­men­da­tion is for a pres­i­den­cy to be con­test­ed by in­di­vid­u­als not as­so­ci­at­ed with a par­ty and based on the can­di­dates hav­ing the nec­es­sary skills and ex­pe­ri­ence re­lat­ed to his/her abil­i­ty and ex­pe­ri­ence to se­lect and man­age an ex­ec­u­tive team to achieve de­sired ob­jec­tives. He/She will be re­spon­si­ble to the elec­torate for the suc­cess or fail­ure of the cab­i­net that has been se­lect­ed; a form of vet­ting of the min­is­te­r­i­al can­di­dates will be re­quired, and that can be done by the MPs.

Crit­i­cal­ly im­por­tant is the need for a con­sti­tu­tion­al frame­work which al­lows for the en­tire cit­i­zen­ry, vot­ing or not, to be heav­i­ly in­volved in gov­er­nance through mech­a­nisms to be iden­ti­fied and im­ple­ment­ed. The sys­tem of elect­ing a gov­ern­ment and then hav­ing the pop­u­la­tion stand aside for five years be­fore it be­comes in­volved in an­oth­er emp­ty se­lec­tion process has not worked.

The re­al­i­ty is that what has been at­tempt­ed over the post-in­de­pen­dence pe­ri­od has brought the coun­try to this crit­i­cal junc­ture where a dif­fer­ent form of in­ter­ven­tion­ist sys­tem is re­quired.

To be con­tin­ued.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er – free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and St. Au­gus­tine – In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.