Permanent secretaries
Last week on his Facebook page, attorney at law Darren Wade queried the presence of Education Ministry Permanent Secretary, Shannielle Hoosein-Outar at the just concluded PPP Congress. There was an immediate clapback by the Minister of Education, Priya Manickchand who aside from vitriol asked why Mr Wade had targeted a public officer and not her. Ms Manickchand also went on to explain that after the Congress “…we used the opportunity to determine for the participants of Regions 1, 7, 8 and 9 what might be issues affecting them in education that we could resolve. Because it is usually harder for those residents to reach us. The PS left her home on a holiday and was doing her job by recording and resolving those issues”.
The first thing that should be said is that Ms Hoosein-Outar has to be accountable to the public for her conduct and Ms Manickchand should not interpose unnecessarily. Ms Hoosein-Outar is the lead civil servant in the ministry and has just been presented to the public as the chief negotiator for the ministry in its talks with the Guyana Teachers’ Union (GTU). She must be accountable.
Second, even overlooking her red garb, it is most unacceptable for a Permanent Secretary to have to be at a ruling party Congress in any capacity. But the PPP has no time for such conventions. While it was a capital idea for the ruling party to make use of the presence of hinterland delegates in Georgetown to determine what ailed their education system, it was for the minister - present at the congress in her capacity as a party member - to either take the notes herself or have someone else do it and then present same to Ms Hoosein-Outar at the Ministry’s HQ on Brickdam. That would be how things are done conventionally.
There should be as clear a separation as possible between the ruling party and government otherwise shades of that old malady party paramountcy become evident. The situation was worse than just the presence of Ms HooseinOutar. There was at least one other Permanent Secretary present at the Congress, the controversial Mae Toussaint Jr Thomas. It would be remembered that in 2023 Ms Toussaint Jr Thomas was subjected to a secondary inspection by US Customs and Border Protection at Miami Airport. They seized her cell phone and questioned her for an unknown period of time. Her US visa was revoked and there are lingering questions about the purpose of a sum of money in her possession as she was travelling to China purportedly on party business. After the furore, she was shunted from the Permanent Secretary
job at the Ministry of Home Affairs to the corresponding position at the Ministry of Labour.
She wasn’t just a casual observer at the Congress or a scribe for her minister. She ended up being elected among the five non-voting members of the new PPP Central Committee. This means her name was entered into the voting system for the Congress and neither she nor the PPP or for a matter of fact the Minister of Labour could be bothered. So all bets are off. The PPP does not recognise that the post of the Permanent Secretary should be insulated from the reach of the party.
It is not surprising at all. From Nigel Dharamlall to Collin Croal and others, the PPP has had the habit of parachuting its party apparatchiks into the civil service side of ministries and then elevating them to the political leads in the ministries. Mr Dharamlall was the Permanent Secretary in the Ministry of Amerindian Affairs in the Ramotar Administration and the now former Minister of Local Government in the Ali administration. Similarly, Mr Croal moved from Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Local Government to Minister of Housing and Water.
Permanent Secretaries are meant to continue administrating the business of their ministries no matter which party takes the reins of office. At least in the traditions of the past, they continued on as their ministers recognised their non-political background and knew that they were in their positions by reason of their high skills and institutional knowledge. They could continue the programmes left incomplete by one government and they provided advice that was uncoloured by political bias. Not
so these days. Neither this government nor the one before it or its predecessors apprehended this great attribute of good functioning governments. A change of government these days ends in a turning out of most permanent secretaries to be replaced by party sympathisers and activists and the upheaval that brings.
Just as an aside even in public service reforms, changes by one government no matter how well thought out or costly get tossed out once a new administration takes office. Such was the case of the then KPMG Peat Marwick McLintock-guided public service reforms in 1990 funded by the British Government. Its rationalising of ministries and general reforms have been completely erased over time.
In her response to Mr Wade, Ms Manickchand also used the ultimate umbrella to cover the presence of Ms Hoosein-Outar at the Congress. “Outside of all of that, you may be slightly familiar with a document called the Constitution which gives her and everyone else the right to freely associate. If she so chooses, she can support the PPP/C”, said Ms Manickchand. There is no doubting of the right to freely associate. It is a question of whether longstanding traditions in the public service mean anything at all to the PPP/C government.