Opinion
- Editorial
Mary King:
Executive leadership
My last but one article addressed the need for a
certain type of leader in the country. Are we looking
for another Dr Eric Williams, who is now the subject
of "mortalisation'', or those who built plants
that we owned in Pt Lisas then sold them when we
got into economic difficulty?
A paper by Mark Jamison, Leadership
and the Independent Regulator provides the infrastructure
for an answer. A characteristic that any such leader
should have is independence from any political power-or
influence-group. Any person who comes into a leadership
position championing, say, the downtrodden Indo
or Afro Trinbagonian is doomed from the start. Though
Mr Panday as prime minister tried desperately to
put over the view that the UNC was about unity his
leadership position was compromised because he was
seen as a prime minister of the Indo Trinbagonian.
He further compromised his position by his alliance
with certain financial groups that allegedly financed
the party. Some say Mr Patrick Manning is guilty
of the same lack of independence but to a lesser
extent. Mr Winston Dookeran with his new politics
and the encouragement of alliances with other fledgling
political groups is possibly striving for this independence.
But this independence can also put
our leaders into difficulty since they have to find
the optimum mix of independence, accountability
and flexibility. In making such trade-offs certain
stakeholders may lose things they value. For example,
PM Manning, in trying to demonstrate this mix in
agreeing to change the Trinity Cross, has offended
some stakeholders who are likely to retaliate. His
decision was authoritative and had little to do
with leadership. Independence of our leaders is
also compromised since they become stakeholders
and have to make decisions they then implement,
decisions that some stakeholders support and others
do not. The Prime Minister somehow made the decision
that our economic development depends on the rapid
monetisation of our energy resources and spending
the proceeds just as fast. He has raised the ire
of very well informed stakeholders who besides arguing
against the decision feel that they were not involved
in the decision process and are being dictated to.
The problem is that our leaders confuse authority
with leadership. When a leader demonstrates his
authority he is really giving us his solutions to
our problems. For example, we have problems in spiralling
inflation, under-unemployment, poverty, collapse
of our infrastructure, damage to the environment
and chaos on the roads. But the Executive has given
us increasing liquidity, URP, CEPEP, building of
the docks, building of the POS government campus
and the UTT and dares to ask us to show why they
should not have done these things, given that our
GDP and our foreign reserves are increasing and
our unemployment is reducing.
If our leaders were about leadership
they would have been about mobilising the population
to tackle the tough problems. Leadership raises
questions and forces people to face the difficult
problems whose solutions require rethinking of value
traditions and closely held beliefs. We have an
extremely difficult situation ahead of us, which
is a combination of the volatility of energy prices,
depletion of our natural resources and on-shore
Dutch disease. We had a dress rehearsal of the first
in the 1970s and our economy collapsed. But our
Executive with its head in the sand has not confronted
the people with these difficult problems, so initiating
a search for solutions by the population that will
entail behaviour changes. Instead we hear one minister
telling us that the best time to spend our windfall
from high energy prices is when we get it else we
can lose it if we do not assign it to ministries
or funds to be spent.
Our Government as a leader is on the "dance
floor'' with us and can only see themselves and
the people near them. They need to get on the "balcony''
and look down on the dance floor, then our Executive
will get a perspective on what is happening. From
there they will see who is dancing, who is not,
who has jobs and what kind of jobs, why 40 per cent
of us are poor, why so much violence, why agriculture
is dead, why some do not want smelters, why manufacturing
is still at the screw driver level, why the educated
is migrating, who is benefitting from the energy
sector, is the CEPEP and URP dance sustainable?
Our Executive has to step back and ask, why some
are engaged in their (Executive) activities and
others are not, and is anything happening beyond
their vision? Our Executive with a five-year electoral
vision, deeply concerned with cosmetic performance
indicators, cannot be accused of practising leadership
skills.
-
To be continued.
Mary
King
is
a well known TT's opinion and commentary writer
(maryking@tstt.net.tt ). Petroleumworld not necessarily
share these views.
Editor's
Note: This commentary was published by The Trinidad
Express, on Monday, June 19th 2006, Petroleumworld
reprint this article in the interest of our readers.
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Petroleumworld
05 25 06
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© 2006 William Lucie-Smith/Trinidad Express.
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