Ke­jan Haynes

News­gath­er­ing Ed­i­tor

ke­jan.haynes@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s pro­pos­al for a new Min­istry of Ef­fi­cien­cy and Im­ple­men­ta­tion has sparked mixed re­ac­tions from po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts, with ques­tions be­ing asked about its nov­el­ty and ne­ces­si­ty.

The pro­posed min­istry would op­er­ate out of the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter and aims to re­duce gov­ern­ment bu­reau­cra­cy. But two an­a­lysts said the con­cept close­ly re­sem­bles ex­ist­ing mod­els—name­ly, the Unit­ed States’ De­part­ment of Gov­ern­ment Ef­fi­cien­cy (DOGE) and the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship’s for­mer Mon­i­tor­ing and Eval­u­a­tion Unit, which tracked the progress of state projects.

Po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Hamid Ghany said while the idea ap­pears sound on the sur­face, it is hard­ly nov­el.

“Un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, there was a Mon­i­tor­ing and Eval­u­a­tion Unit with­in the Min­istry of Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment, and they used to gen­er­ate an­nu­al re­ports to Par­lia­ment,” Ghany said. “So I think they may have had a re­port in 2012, 2013, [and] 2014. The unit, I do not think, was con­tin­ued when the PNM came to pow­er.

“I see this as a re­vival of some­thing that had been done be­fore. The spir­it in which it has been re­vived, and the con­text in which it has been re­vived ... a num­ber of peo­ple have gone in­to a dis­course about try­ing to liken it to the DOGE ini­tia­tive of the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion, and peo­ple ask­ing ques­tions about who’s go­ing to be the equiv­a­lent of Elon Musk. That is go­ing in­to the nar­ra­tives that have emerged out of it.

“On the sur­face, it is a good idea. As re­gards the ac­tu­al op­er­a­tion of it, it is a re­vival of some­thing that the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship had be­fore,” he added.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Shane Mo­hammed agrees, call­ing the ini­tia­tive a re­hash of a pre­vi­ous Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress pol­i­cy. But he ques­tions the ne­ces­si­ty of a new min­istry, ask­ing what it could ac­com­plish that the Gov­ern­ment could not have done al­ready.

“I al­so think it’s a Trinida­di­an ver­sion of the Unit­ed States DOGE, which is al­so the De­part­ment of Gov­ern­ment Ef­fi­cien­cy,” Mo­hammed said. “And I think there is where you find that Mr Young is try­ing to align him­self with some sim­i­lar­i­ties that would give him a plat­form to be seen and heard by the Amer­i­can gov­ern­ment.

“How­ev­er, my ques­tion is this. Mr Young is not new to the po­lit­i­cal sys­tem. He’s not new to gov­er­nance. And hav­ing had the con­fi­dence of the prime min­is­ter—for­mer—for so many years, what pre­vent­ed the gov­ern­ment from ex­er­cis­ing its du­ty and re­spon­si­bil­i­ty in gov­ern­ment ef­fi­cien­cies and in im­ple­ment­ing prop­er strate­gies and process­es that would build pub­lic trust and con­fi­dence in how we do gov­ern­ment busi­ness and how gov­ern­ment does busi­ness with the peo­ple?,” Mo­hammed said.

“So there is where my big ques­tion mark is: what pre­vent­ed the min­is­ter—and now prime min­is­ter—from get­ting this done?”

Mo­hammed al­so point­ed to a past PNM de­ci­sion to scrap the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship’s “From Red Tape to Red Car­pet” pol­i­cy, which aimed to sim­pli­fy do­ing busi­ness with the State.”

He added, “They scrapped that. So how could they have tak­en good work­ing poli­cies, good work­ing frame­works, scrapped it and left us go­ing back­wards? He now wants to take us for­ward with the Min­istry of Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Ef­fi­cien­cy. I think this is just an­oth­er plas­ter on a gap­ing wound.”

Mean­while, dur­ing his pre­sen­ta­tion of three can­di­dates yes­ter­day in Bam­boo #1, Val­sayn, leader of the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) Phillip Alexan­der crit­i­cised Young’s in­ten­tion to cre­ate a new min­istry to ad­dress pub­lic bu­reau­cra­cy.

“He try­ing to copy Elon Musk. He go­ing and cre­ate a de­part­ment of ef­fi­cien­cy. Hear is how he de­scribes his de­part­ment of ef­fi­cien­cy. He wil bul­ly the peo­ple in his of­fice, who will bul­ly the peo­ple be­low them so he could get what he want. Stu­art Young cre­at­ing a min­istry of bul­ly­ing.”

He called on the me­dia to raise the point as it is not a small is­sue and called on oth­ers who may have been bul­lied by Young to come for­ward.