Dear Editor,
Allowing for the non-allocation of responsibilities for Finance and critically Oil and Gas, indications so far are as follows:
a) Nineteen (19) Ministers
b) Three (3) Ministries to be managed each by two (2) Ministers
c) Nine (9) Ministers who have been personally resuscitated
d) Ministries would have appeared to be re-christened with old familiar nomenclatures
e) Newcomers to Ministerial portfolios so far add up to nine (9)
Along with the President himself and the Prime Minister, the above will debate and decide on the fortunes of approximately 700,000 citizens – a rough average of about 30,000 per Minister.
But more importantly perhaps, others would wonder which team conducted the Performance Appraisal exercise and recommended, with but one or two exceptions, the list of old time candidates for leadership throughout pandemic and post-pandemic times, who must contend with not only old, but indeed substantially new educational, economic, sociological, technological challenges – to name a few – in an environment increasingly occupied by foreign representatives of varied international interests.
As a priority however, there are critical faultlines to be corrected, and organisational failures to be retrieved, underlying which is the profound need for the right human resources to be identified for placement on the right decision-making bus – a situation about which past experience is likely to provide inadequate and irrelevant lessons.
Meanwhile, there are the generations of excited, incentivised, ambitious young and not so young adults, with whom there will be a profound need to communicate, certainly in a more creative style.
For the authoritarian behaviours of the past will hardly inspire uniformed followership. There are just too many organisational comparabilities accessible on social media for those who were voted to fulfill expectations, to assume that the demand for accountability will not be loud and continuous. So that it would not be the old pattern of pronouncing what the leadership will do; but on the contrary it would be a matter of what the latter is required to do.
Therefore must be a plan of strategic communications – involving in turn the various individuals and groups of observers to whom attention should have been paid all this 2020. A substantive theme that would have been extricated from most of the optimisms expressed has been the need for some productive collaborative socio-political construct. For quite justifiably, different perspectives still agree on the wastage over the years caused by contending, opposing, disagreeing, winning – when in fact all have been losing.
Why then should we commit to repeating the errors of the past? On the other hand, must we not re-examine diligently how, when, where and why our previous actions created problems, and then as necessary revisit these ‘problems’ as ‘opportunities’ to be explored, along with fresh new minds?
It is in this connection that one records the following themes extracted from the new President’s address at the Swearing-In ceremony:
• “Working in the interest of all Guyanese
• Transparency and Accountability
• Utilisation of the best Human Resources”
As an ‘old timer’ like so many of the ‘new’ Cabinet, I continue to be my own harshest critic, to commit to learning, albeit from any level in the organisation. Life is indeed a learning experience during which one understands how much we owe to those who expect to be guided in the right direction towards our country’s future.
What should turn out to be of interest are behaviours that very likely will be exposed to ‘virtual’ witnesses. Victimisation as recommended by those who should know better only diminishes the ability to achieve targets that may be subject to subversion. On the other hand, loyalty alone is not an immediate licence for under-performance. It does not automatically translate into competence.
The late giant Sir Fenton Ramsahoye would regularly remind me that “one thing a man does not know is that he does not know.”
I plead guilty.
Yours faithfully,
E.B. John
