Service to the nation and who is in charge

THE EDITOR: There is apparently a remarkable difference in approach between public officials and their attitudes to service and administration.

I refer to the statements made respectively by the recently installed President Paula-Mae Weekes and the new chancellor of the University of the West Indies, Robert Bermudez.

I compare with the speeches of two other national leaders with comments by Camille Robinson-Regis, Minister of Planning and Development and Shamfa Cudjoe, Minister of Tourism.

When she was sworn into office, Weekes said, “It falls to each President to define within prescribed limits his or in this case her own role. After much deliberation I identified my role as ‘humble first servant’ with the mandate to render service with enthusiasm.”

Later in her address, she said, “As your servant, my promise is that I will work tirelessly (I’ll labour night and day) to do my best by word and deed both to be a light and spread the light of others at every opportunity. But if you feel that you are going to leave me alone to do all the heavy lifting, you’re sadly mistaken.”

On September 16, 2017, at his inauguration as UWI chancellor, Bermudez said, “Standing here in the Daaga Auditorium, named in memory of a rebellious slave, brings to mind a rebel of my time: Makandal Daaga, a man who chose to identify himself as the ‘Chief Servant,’ a description that resonates deeply with me as it captures what I believe good leadership to be.”

On the other hand, virtually at the beginning of the current Government’s tenure, the two PNM politicians made scathing comments that revealed their attitude to leadership.

After she had spoken to the Standing Committee of Finance in the House of Representatives on October 19, 2015, a reporter asked Robinson-Regis about her statement in Parliament a few weeks previously, when she said: “We are in charge now.”

Her answer was that she had no regrets about the statement, adding it was made against the background that the Government had a very limited time to have the 2016 budget passed.

She further said, “I do not regret the statement but if it was offensive to anybody in the national community then that is the only thing I can say but it is in fact where we are.”

During that budget debate, Cudjoe had also indicated, “We are in charge of this House and you are going to have to deal with it.” She also said the PNM will now function like a “jumbie from Les Coteaux” in the Parliament.

As Jabari Fraser wrote, in “Bull, princess and stink: Jabari picks Parliament’s blue soap wall of shame” (October, 17 2015), “Shamfa Cudjoe would have done well not to parrot Camille Robinson-Regis’ affirmation that the PNM is now in charge of the House. It smells high of tribalism and the discriminatory party politics that have come to be the norm.”

It may be that the two ministers are following former prime minister Basdeo Panday’s Machiavellian-type submission that “politics has a morality of its own.” Within that mantra service to nation and others is not a priority.

The nation has to step up and compare the tone resonating from these recent and not so recent speeches.

AIYEGORO OME, Mt Lambert