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For the ninth time in 35 months, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley has made changes to his government (January 27, 2016, February 1, 2016, March 17, 2016, October 31, 2016, June 29, 2017, July 2, 2017, April 9, 2018, April 10, 2018, and August 6, 2018). This time he made a major reshuffle by reassigning Edmund Dillon as Minister of National Security to become Minister of Housing and Urban Development and replaced him with Stuart Young who retained his portfolios of Minister of Communications and Minister in the Office of the Prime Minister, while vacating his other junior ministerial posting of Minister in the Ministry of the Attorney General and Legal Affairs.
These changes came on the heels of the Prime Minister moving the motion to approve the presidential notification in the House of Representatives on July 30 for Gary Griffith to become Commissioner of Police. It would appear now that the Prime Minister has put his core national security team in place.
It is quite possible that the Prime Minister asked that the party line whip be lifted for the vote in the House on July 30 because he detected that there was division in the ranks of his MPs over the Griffith notification. Every PNM MP who was present, and voted, supported Griffith.
Whether moving Dillon from Knox Street to South Quay will be the answer to the Government’s problems on crime together with the departure of Stephen Williams from Sackville Street and his replacement there by Gary Griffith, we have to wait and see. There is still uncertainty (at the time of writing) about when Griffith will actually assume duties as the substantive Commissioner of Police. Stuart Young has already started his tour of duty as Minister of National Security based on official photographs released in the media.
So why did Prime Minister Rowley move against one of his most trusted Cabinet ministers in favour of another trusted Cabinet minister in a midnight reshuffle? That will remain a mystery for the general public however, Dillon has had to put a brave face on his reassignment based on the tone of the media interviews that he has given.
At the final PNM campaign rally in September 2015, Rowley promised the population that his government would hit the ground running from day one on the issue of crime. He had two brigadiers and a former assistant commissioner of police among his slate of candidates so there was every reason to believe that the PNM had the wherewithal to launch a credible attack against the crime epidemic in the country.
No one really expected, during the heat of the election, that 35 months later that one brigadier would be a backbencher, the other would be tending to the affairs of the nation’s housing stock, and the former assistant commissioner of police would be a Parliamentary Secretary in National Security.
On January 27, 2016, Rowley appointed the Foreign Affairs Minister, Dennis Moses, as a junior minister in National Security in addition to his duties as Foreign Minister. On February 1, 2016, Rowley added Glenda Jennings-Smith as Parliamentary Secretary in National Security. It was obvious he wanted to address the crime problem seriously however, the strategy has failed to date. On July 18 instant, the National Crime Plan was launched by Dillon and now he is no longer there to oversee it.
With two years to go before a general election, it is clear that Rowley is making a final roll of the dice to see if he can get it right in the fight against crime. Perhaps, the best clue to whether these changes are being welcomed internally in the PNM will come this week when people who are interested in standing for office in the internal elections of the party can declare their candidacies.
The PNM internal elections have been shifted from September 16 to September 30, so there is now a longer campaign period. Will there be challengers across the board or will there be unchallenged positions in a majority of cases?
The removal of Dillon from National Security and the replacement with Stuart Young has completed a shift of power in the Government and party towards a Young/Al-Rawi/Imbert axis of dominance.
Doing the reshuffle just after midnight on Sunday and immediately going on vacation on Monday meant that Rowley did not really want to talk about it. Why?