All new govt.s make mistakes, but…

Aug 13, 2015 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

It is psychologically impossible for any new government to step into office and become a whirlwind of coruscating success in six months. That isn’t going to happen. That never happened before. Large and small mistakes will be made, followed by some silly, faulty directions. In time, wisdom comes along and the wronged paths are carefully avoided. But aren’t some mistakes avoidable in the very few weeks? I think so.
The Granger/Nagamootoo administration has some minor hiccups to deal with.
It was Dr. David Hinds who was the first person to point to an oversized Cabinet. This bulky Cabinet had a logical explanation, but still it was too large. The plausible excuse was that the Government of Guyana is a coalition within a coalition. You have an APNU- AFC coalition, meaning that there has to be ministers from both formations. But APNU is also a coalition. The leadership of the PNC could have damaged its credibility by overlooking the other small parties. It would have sent the wrong signal and in future elections other parties would not want to join up.
But even with this mega Cabinet, some inelegancies ought not to be there. The President and the Minister of the Presidency essentially cover governance. The APNU-AFC Government has borrowed unnecessarily from the PPP regime. It has a governance triumvirate like the former PPP administration. It was the President, Roger Luncheon and Gail Teixeira as Advisor on Governance. Joe Harmon replaced Roger Luncheon and Raphael Trotman replaced Gail Teixeira.
But here is where confusion comes in. Even with a bulging Cabinet you still have Raphael Trotman holding two portfolios. Trotman also covers sections of the environment, forestry and mining. Enter Winston Felix. Mr. Felix was a Commissioner of Police, therefore you couldn’t assign him a low portfolio. But this is what he got. Trust me! I am on the ground where I hear the vibes from all types of citizens. Guyanese found the Ministry of Citizenship absolutely amusing. They still do.
Why not give back immigration matters to the Ministry of Public Infrastructure and give Mr. Felix those three sections that Raphael Trotman has and title his portfolio, the Ministry of National Assets.
If you compare the two persons, Felix and Trotman, Felix would know more of the mining areas and the parts of Guyana where forestry thrives, because as Commissioner of Police, he would have had more than a working knowledge of those geographical sections of our 83,000 square miles.
I see the large Cabinet as a mistake. I see the Ministry of Citizenship as a mistake. I see the Trotman double portfolio as a mistake. The APNU-AFC leadership cannot correct the big number of Ministries, and I think the nation has come to accept that. But some other faults could be attended to.
There is also the enigma of a certain huge ministry. Guyana’s two gigantic ministries are Public Infrastructure and Agriculture. I honestly don’t know which is bigger. The former has two ministers, the latter has one. Something isn’t right here.
Education has two ministers, so do Finance, Health, Social Protection, Communities, Public Security, and Indigenous Affairs. Why does Agriculture have one? In this entire country, we cannot find a junior Minister of Agriculture?
With the hospitalization of Mr. Noel Holder, the Agriculture Minister, it has been reported by at least one media house that Mr. Holder indicated he didn’t need a deputy.
But why was that authority given to Mr. Holder when it was in the country’s interest for the Ministry to have two?
Under the Cummingsburg Accord, the Agriculture portfolio was assigned to the AFC, and one would like to think that APNU felt it didn’t want to step into the jurisdiction of its coalition partner.
Now that the nation knows that Mr. Holder doesn’t want a deputy, it brings into sharp focus how party politics operate in Guyana. It is for the AFC to look at the broader picture and install a junior minister.
Why doesn’t Nagamootoo take Agriculture and Holder become Minster within the Ministry? The appointment of Noel Holder as a Minister of Government came as a deep, extensive and complete surprise to me. I will elaborate on this in the future.
Finally, with sugar and rice in deep trouble, gold prices heading for the bottom of the well, and the revelation that the economy didn’t do too well in 2014, did we need to spend 65 million on an 80-member entourage for Carifesta? Wasn’t that another example of an oversized formation and an expenditure we could not have afforded at this time?

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