Who to drop and who to pick?
Dec 14, 2016 Source
The President has indicated that there will be no reshuffling or other changes to his Cabinet. The President means that he has a good team. It does not mean that all the members of the team are performing, just that there is no need at this time to make changes.Persons understandably are disappointed by the refusal of the President to either shuffle his Cabinet or fire some members and bring in new blood. One, however, does not simply chop and change a team simply because some people are not performing. But certainly, when persons embarrass the government there comes a time when chopping has to take place, especially if those persons have lost the confidence of the people.
People want to see persons fired. To them this is a sign of seriousness and intolerance for malfeasance, mistakes and poor performance. But the problems are not just at the top, there are also in the middle and at the lower echelons of society.
The President is hamstrung in making changes at the top. He runs a coalition government. He cannot exercise power in the same way that a person who heads a party which has won an election. The President has to consider the fact that there is an alliance between his party and five other parties. It is not that the other parties are holding him back from acting. It is a more complex situation.
For one, he is part of a framework which, however imperfect, is the one in which he has to operate. This requires some amount of consensus building. The President simply cannot act of his own accord. There will be consequences.The President also simply cannot take action which can threaten the coalition. He cannot fire one of his own and not touch another from the AFC who may not be performing. But given the arrangement between APNU and the AFC, the President would need to get the approval of the AFC before firing anyone. And the AFC is not likely to ask that any one of its members be fired. What we are therefore looking at is the possibility of the same faces in Cabinet being there for the next five years.
The President was recently reelected as the Leader of the PNCR. He has previously won two of the party’s elections by narrow margins, and both victories were controversial.
The President, it is believed, owes his election as leader to Robert Corbin. He was not part of the leadership of the PNC before 2011. He is therefore a political newcomer. He does not have the political experience as other leaders of the party, and since it is felt that he is a newcomer, he does not enjoy the same level of support as the other seasoned leaders of the party. He will therefore be risking political ostracism by the PNC if he attempts to move against some of its powerful leaders.The President is also new to leadership in government. He has had leadership experience in the army, but that is a different type of structure – one that is a command-style bureaucracy. The President, therefore, will need to get his feet wet in government before he attempts any ambitious changes which can backfire on him politically.
The President also heads a government which is politically inexperienced. Only two members of his Cabinet have had ministerial experience before. This clearly places him at a disadvantage, since accommodation has to be made for the fact that most members of Cabinet are serving in that position for the first time.The PPP had a similar experience when they took over in 1992. But Jagan was more adventurous in giving responsibilities to untried and untested persons. The PPP, however, hardly chopped and changed its Cabinet before 2006.
The other problem that the President faces is the choices that he has. He is obligated to choose most of his Cabinet from the list of party candidates at the last elections. The persons chosen have to eventually be a member of the National Assembly or already be part of that assembly. When you go through that list of candidates and the list of parliamentarians, you will find that there is not much for the President to choose from.
A lot of persons can be dropped from the team, but where are the suitable replacements?
