In 1964, Eng­land’s prime min­is­ter Harold Wil­son quipped that a week was a long time in pol­i­tics.

Last week start­ed with the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s (PNM) spe­cial con­ven­tion and pre­sen­ta­tion of can­di­dates in Wood­ford Square—a sure sign that the an­nounce­ment of the elec­tion date was close at hand.

Mere hours af­ter that, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley re­signed, Stu­art Young was ap­point­ed as his re­place­ment, and the Cab­i­net was reshuf­fled.

The ink on the Prime Min­is­ter’s let­ter of ap­point­ment was hard­ly dry be­fore the elec­tion date was an­nounced. It begs the ques­tion: what was the pur­pose of the Cab­i­net reshuf­fle in which a mem­ber of Par­lia­ment who will not con­test the elec­tion was pro­mot­ed and a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary-turned-diplo­mat was ap­point­ed fi­nance min­is­ter?

Like Dr Row­ley’s res­ig­na­tion, the rel­e­ga­tion of min­is­ters Fitzger­ald Hinds and Colm Im­bert in that reshuf­fle can on­ly be viewed as an at­tempt to de­flect crit­i­cism in the gen­er­al elec­tion cam­paign and not a re­pu­di­a­tion of their poli­cies. It is ei­ther a shrewd elec­toral cal­cu­la­tion or a feck­less mis­di­rec­tion.

Mr Young’s fre­net­ic pace and flur­ry of ac­tiv­i­ties ap­pear to be part of a cal­i­brat­ed ex­er­cise to demon­strate that he is a man of ac­tion and sub­stance who is ready and ca­pa­ble of lead­ing the coun­try and par­ty that will bring a fresh vi­sion.

This pace is odd­ly rem­i­nis­cent of US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump’s play­book to show that he is in com­mand and ca­pa­ble. How­ev­er, Mr Young’s lat­est promise to im­ple­ment a Min­istry of Im­ple­men­ta­tion and Ef­fi­cien­cy has to be tak­en in the con­text of Dr Row­ley’s part­ing con­cerns about the fail­ure of the pub­lic ser­vice as a rea­son for his un­der­achieve­ment in of­fice.

Mr Young’s con­ven­ing of a meet­ing with bankers and the new fi­nance min­is­ter is sim­i­lar. If the for­eign ex­change short­age was that easy to re­solve, what was Mr Im­bert do­ing for the last ten years? Can we rea­son­ably ex­pect any­thing to change with re­spect to this is­sue in the next 30 days?

With a gen­er­al elec­tion now sched­uled for April 28, the re­al­i­ty is that the coun­try is now sad­dled with a Cab­i­net with lim­it­ed ca­pac­i­ty and time to re­solve any of the ma­jor is­sues that chal­lenged it for the last ten years un­der Dr Row­ley’s lead­er­ship.

Dr Row­ley re­mains the po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM and a key play­er in this elec­tion cam­paign, as ev­i­denced by his on­slaught a few days ago on Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath of UWI’s De­part­ment of Po­lit­i­cal Sci­ence. Dr Ra­goonath has com­ment­ed on both par­ties as any po­lit­i­cal com­men­ta­tor should. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, shoot­ing the mes­sen­ger does not di­min­ish the mes­sage. For ex­am­ple, crit­ics of the Drag­on deal or the San­dals were la­belled as un­pa­tri­ot­ic, naysay­ers or op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers.

It is dif­fi­cult not to con­clude that Stu­art Young’s ap­point­ment and Dr Row­ley’s res­ig­na­tion are not an elab­o­rate ex­er­cise in mis­di­rec­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is al­so us­ing the same strat­e­gy of mis­di­rec­tion. The dis­af­fect­ed mem­bers flee­ing the par­ty have been brand­ed PNM sym­pa­this­ers. Sim­i­lar­ly, the ad­ver­tis­ing de­ployed to date has been fo­cused on ex­ploit­ing the cit­i­zens’ fear and wor­ry over crime, eco­nom­ic se­cu­ri­ty, visa and trav­el re­stric­tions and the avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change.

The chal­lenges fac­ing the coun­try are as dif­fi­cult as they are re­al. We earnest­ly hope the po­lit­i­cal par­ties will rise above the shal­low and cal­low po­lit­i­cal strat­a­gems and ad­dress mean­ing­ful so­lu­tions to the coun­try’s prob­lems.