Government's normalising of failure

THE EDITOR: Many citizens have been swept up by the spectacle of US politics in recent days.

We have witnessed Joe Biden's decision to relinquish his party’s nomination for the presidency, when it became clear he had no path to victory.

We have also seen the resignation of the head of the US Secret Service in the aftermath of the agency’s failure to protect former president Donald Trump from an assassination attempt. Both decisions were based on logic, unforgiving facts, and demands by concerned parties.

Unfortunately, anyone watching local television and reading the press was also treated to the spectacle of Fitzgerald Hinds defending his tenure as head of national security – the area of national life that is closest to a full-blown disaster area. “Proud of my work,” said a front-page headline. Hinds is quoted as giving “my mind, my time, my heart, my soul” to his ministry.

He is passionate at least when pressed for answers, but is sadly mistaken about his efforts and their value.

The criteria are not how much he gave, or how he felt about it. It is what he was able to do, which is, very little. During his tenure crime, murders, rape, and human trafficking have grown to proportions that were unthinkable just a few years ago.

The immediate response is to call for accountability.

In the Westminster system, failure or loss of confidence requires immediate resignation. Rishi Sunak immediately offered his resignation after the recent UK election loss. Before him, David Cameron and Liz Truss did the same when they lost key votes – like the Brexit referendum, for Cameron.

In other countries like Finland and New Zealand, politicians have resigned when they were simply unable to do the job, for the good of their parties and countries. In TT, the opposite seems to apply.

The reward for failure is promotion. We need only look at the national security apparatus – competent people are chucked out and rules are twisted to keep the incompetents.

We have the morbid spectacle of two people who were close to the bottom of interview score lists, but who were hired and kept on. The one police commissioner who achieved success was fired and remains the target of a campaign waged by this government, under cover of parliamentary privilege.

It is easy to say Hinds must go. He should, but then, given government’s wide bench of carefully selected, below-average replacements, what happens?

We should recall that incompetence, especially in the National Security Ministry, is a feature, not a bug, of this government. In the last Manning administration, the late Martin Joseph was in an identical position. Failure followed failure and there were repeated calls for resignation.

I have already proposed solutions – a think tank of experts who come up with some short-term solutions, amending laws to encourage rather than discourage citizens. But I don’t think this is the cause of the deeper problem.

The cause of the problem is that failure – and a refusal to take its consequences – have become normalised. We see this in certain aspects of the Opposition as well.

If the inability to do a job is not the main criterion for keeping it, then one of the pillars of our ability to function efficiently as a society has just snapped. How many others, equally unfit, are occupying crucial positions...and failing? Each failure adds to the national distress – the economy, housing, agriculture.

A good example of “mysterious decisions” by government appointees comes from economist Dr Terrence Farrell.

He wrote, a few days ago in the press that he found the Central Bank’s recent reduction in the cash-reserve requirement for banks “perplexing” and opined that it flew in the face of economic logic. His fear, he wrote, was “monetary policy has been relaxed significantly to accommodate increased government borrowing.”

So yet another illogical, and potentially harmful decision was made according to Government's desires, if not instructions, with a high potential for chaos to follow.

Given this, the question then, is not Hinds’ competence. The data and shouts for his resignation effectively answer that.

It is the normalising of failure by Government. Accountability being substituted with loyalty and obedience to government as criteria for tenure, is killing us all slowly.

DINESH RAMBALLY

MP, Chaguanas West