Back to old time days

THE EDITOR: The PNM’s propensity for and habitual recourse to an ad hoc, on-the-spur-of-the-moment manner of doing things and its managerial incompetence are deficits that infect its ability to govern effectively. It exhibits this knowledge gap easily today through two senior ministers, Terrence Deyalsingh and Faris Al-Rawi.

Deyalsingh, the Minister of Health, insisted when he took office that the ministry must revert to the “old time days” in the way the organisation is structured and its systems are streamlined. Having done this, he persists in his perennial complaints, including that public sector doctors are at their private practice instead of at hospital.

It is clear to any right thinking person that if the structure of an organisation produces a particular output which one finds wanting in one way or the other, then if you want to change that output you have to restructure the organisation and create new systems.

The PNM it seems is tied to the old time days’ navel string. It is accustomed to chanting a litany of woes and to a PNM brand of corruption and decided to change everything that the previous government had modernised back to the old ways so that its incessant singing and corruption can continue.

In the midst of what has become almost a “tradition” of complaining, it does two things: it creates inane media advertisements through which it makes hollow appeals for altruistic public spiritedness and patriotic volunteerism that are largely ignored.

Secondly, it does what it knows best: it creates hurried ad hoc quick-fix, short-term programmes that may achieve its stated goals but fail to produce lasting results.

The “Sunday surgeries” and the Anti-Gang Bill are both striking examples of the mindset of a political party that has lost its ability to manage, and therefore its ability to govern.

Before expanding on this, look at Finance Minister Colm Imbert’s demonstration of PNM’s quick-fix and politically driven approach to problem-solving. He reflected on the National Lotteries Control Board’s (NLCB) declaration of $300 million profit for last year and its turnover of more than $2 billion, and ordered a ten per cent tax on all NLCB winnings before properly doing the math.

When it was pointed out to him that if he did this the NLCB will realise a loss of $164 million, he again jumps into impulse mode and “decides” that the tax will apply next year and will be for winnings of over $1,000. Come on, times are too hard to have governance by vaps.

So the Minister of Health wants greater productivity and rather than radically rethink the reorganisation of the ministry, he will sit and tinker with it like Tweedledum because he must retain vestiges of the ancient past simply because he does not feel “good” without the ole time days.

So what does he do? He does more of the same thing the PNM always does — Sunday surgeries. Gather all the eye surgeons, give them a pep talk with or without a cash incentive then have a big photo shoot on the newspapers and televisions and a political opportunity to boast that his government has saved the sight of thousands — until two weeks hence when the same old retarded system stutters back in.

Attorney General Al-Rawi and his geologist leader both know that if the PNM “prevailed” in this country for all eternity, the two problems they can never solve are corruption and crime. The PNM is the father of corruption. Ironically, the longer it governs, the worse both problems will be. Both problems spell trouble for the country with a capital “T” if any bill like the one that raised Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley’s ire at its defeat is ever passed.

STEVE SMITH via e-mail