President Ali recently gave a speech in which he said that in the new government ”you will see a flatter structure and I would want something more connected to the people and I want to make it clear that it will be results oriented and measured”.  He went on to add “I have always been a strong believer in teamwork and collective thinking. I want to assure you that Guyana requires the skills of all of us to work in a collective and collaborative manner, if we are to build a strong and sustainable country, a country that all of us can be proud of.” It was a potpourri of management consulting buzzwords. I was almost expecting him to say in the next breadth that the new government was going to be customer centric and as such will be a sea change from the previous government and that he was going to reach out to the various department heads to identify the low-hanging fruits for near term synergies and for them to circle back to him with their thoughts.

I am personally more focused on plans and results. I would like to know the tangible near term and long-term objectives. An outline of the execution plan. Then rate him and his team periodically on the actual results vs. the targeted results. Given the delay in the declaration, the new government is already 2 quarters behind in a 20 quarter mandate. In the best of times this is a challenge. Now layer on the unforeseen pandemic and you are looking at the first year as a potential write off in terms of economic objectives. You have to assume the pandemic will be with us for at least another two years along with a prolonged period of depressed oil prices and the challenges start to build. In my view the plans they had before March 2 will have to be changed substantially. They would be well advised to be straight up with the country and quickly outline the recalibrated plans in this abbreviated honeymoon phase.

A strong effective opposition plays a key role in holding the government accountable. However it is important for the PPP’s base to also play this role. If the base wants to ensure their party retains their role as the governing party in 2025, they would do well to remind their leaders their vote should not be taken for granted. This means real-time feedback when they are going off track and making sure the party continues to build a diversity reflective of the country. For those of you who think the PNC is destroyed or will be wandering in a state of purgatory for the foreseeable future you are living in a fantasy. Guyana is as partisan a country as any and probably more so given the history of ethnic politics. You should bet on the PNC being a formidable force by 2025. To put it in context, the final vote count showed just over a 3% difference between the PPP and the Coalition. That is well within the margin of error for the average election poll.

Apologies for intruding on the party.