IT is not unusual, nor totally unexpected, that when administrations come to office they would wish to have persons sharing their political philosophies be placed in key positions to lead the new dispensation, which may include changes in policies and direction.
Along with the changes in the politically appointed staff at the level of government ministries, such changes also take place at boards of State-owned enterprises that are expected to implement government policy. And that is where it should end.
Unfortunately, the practice has developed of widespread changing of personnel across the public sector, with anyone not protected by a permanent appointment or falling under the establishment of one of the Service Commissions vulnerable to the political headcounters who see in every contract appointment a potential fifth columnist needing to be excised.
This practice, which began with the National Alliance for Reconstruction in 1986 after it broke the PNM’s 30-year hold on power, has become more pronounced with every administration, reaching its zenith with the current PP administration, which has decreed as official government policy that no contracts are to be renewed and that all jobs are to be re-advertised prior to being filled.
All of this is being positioned as a way of ensuring a new policy direction in Trinidad and Tobago and removing those persons who may be supporters of the former regime and therefore, it is assumed, may seek to undermine the current administration. The policy finds its most crude expression in the e-mails published in today’s Mirror from National Security Advisor to the Prime Minster Gary Griffith that the security agencies need to be purged of all those “PNM persons” who are assumed loyal to the former ruling party. It is a policy that has, however, been energetically pursued across the public sector at every level. Just two weeks ago, for example, the Mirror reported on the decision not to renew the contract of the highly qualified president of the National Gas Company on the basis of nothing related to his performance.
The most spectacular outcome of this policy to date is the payout, revealed this week, of $1 million to Brigadier Peter Joseph over his summary dismissal from the Special Anti-Crime Unit of Trinidad and Tobago (SAUTT), but his is not a unique position since similar hefty payments are being made to cover up the contravention of the rights of employees and management.
This is a dangerous development based on three major false assumptions.
The first assumption is that there is some significant policy difference between the two parties that would require such a wholesale change of personnel. Thus far, what has been in evidence is not so much a change in policy but a total absence of any policy direction, with the PP administration operating almost by vaps.
The second false assumption is that anyone hired under a previous administration owes their allegiance to the party then in government and therefore, regardless of their skill set, can be of no further use to the Government and people of Trinidad and Tobago. An assumption easily disproved by the massive swings in voter support across elections.
One recognises, however, that despite the high-minded objectives that normally accompany the announcement of such changes, they are never driven by any seeking of the national interests but are simply attempts to find jobs for the boys and girls, usually the least qualified, and therefore unable to secure employment on their own merit.
This brings us to the third false assumption, and the one that is most worrying, that Trinidad and Tobago, a relatively small country, has the width and depth of skills necessary to afford such wholesale personnel changes as are usually demanded. The plethora of doctored resumes, bogus PhDs and other make-believe qualifications recently revealed would suggest otherwise.
The million-dollar payout to Brigadier Peter Joseph is therefore a relatively minor cost of a policy that continues to deprive the country of its best and brightest.
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