Our leaders challenged or ill-equipped?

THE EDITOR: The past 20 years have alerted me to the leadership conundrum in TT.

Indeed, I always believed that leadership exists to promote the good and positive and to address the bad and negative in society and organisations.

However, international and domestic politics – as well as the behaviour of private and public sector leaders – have forced me to think otherwise. I now understand that the law of the jungle continues to prevail. In addition, hubris in society has become more pronounced.

I now question the ability of our private and public sector managers and leaders to humanely lead and manage our political, commercial, and organisational affairs. I also have started to question their philosophy, motives, and strategies.

So obsessed have I become that I recall a speech delivered by the deceased former Canadian prime minister, John Diefenbaker (one of my favourite leaders), which reminds me of our main economic events of 2018:

“Across the way, Mr Speaker, sit the purveyors of gloom who would endeavour for political purposes, to panic the Canadian people... They had a warning... Did they tell us that? No. Mr Speaker, why did they not reveal this? Why did they not act when the House was sitting in January…? They had the information... [They] concealed the facts, that is what [they] did.”

Today, we are hearing about radical surgery in Petrotrin, TSTT, and other institutional pillars of the economy. At the same time we are witnessing unprecedented leadership behaviour in TT. When action should have been taken decades ago, we now see panic and draconian measures. We now seem to be confronted by unrestrained hubris. Clearly, we will have to be more careful about voting for, nominating, recruiting, and selecting our leaders.

RAYMOND S HACKETT, Curepe

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"Our leaders challenged or ill-equipped?"

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