Every gen­er­al elec­tion is im­por­tant, as it al­lows cit­i­zens to have an in­put in de­cid­ing the na­tion’s fu­ture. This elec­tion is tak­ing place at a time when the world or­der is un­der­go­ing sig­nif­i­cant changes, and the next ad­min­is­tra­tion must care­ful­ly work its way through the nu­ances of the changes and find ways to im­prove the coun­try’s per­for­mance in every area of ac­tiv­i­ty.

The goal should not mere­ly be to im­prove our phys­i­cal con­di­tion but to give cit­i­zens the ca­pac­i­ty to im­prove them­selves.

Change hap­pens in the nor­mal course of life and takes place with the cer­tain in­evitabil­i­ty of grad­u­al­ness. It in­volves mod­i­fy­ing process­es and sys­tems. Trans­for­ma­tion is about re­defin­ing val­ues and sys­tems and cre­at­ing some­thing new. This re­quires a con­scious break from the past and oc­curs when lead­ers make de­lib­er­ate choic­es be­tween com­pet­ing al­ter­na­tives and in­spire cit­i­zens to fol­low their lead and in­cor­po­rate those habits in­to every­day liv­ing.

This type of trans­for­ma­tion is qui­et but cal­cu­lat­ed and re­quires that we de­vel­op the habits of suc­cess that fa­cil­i­tate that trans­for­ma­tion process and a com­mit­ment to build strong in­sti­tu­tions that op­er­ate on prin­ci­ples, not per­son­al­i­ties.

This is both the chal­lenge and op­por­tu­ni­ty fac­ing the coun­try if we are to move from ex­chang­ing one gov­ern­ment for an­oth­er with­out ad­dress­ing the fun­da­men­tals and chart­ing a new way for­ward.

De­vel­op­ing a Min­istry of Ef­fi­cien­cy is as bad as promis­ing to ne­go­ti­ate high­er base salaries with­out ad­dress­ing the deep­er is­sues which af­fect in­di­vid­ual per­for­mance in gov­ern­ment of­fices. Where there is no vi­sion, the peo­ple per­ish.

It starts with a vi­sion that is clear but sim­ple. The dev­il is in the de­tails and in the com­mit­ment to take the steps nec­es­sary to achieve that trans­for­ma­tion. Not on­ly do lead­ers have to own the vi­sion, but they must al­so be able to per­suade oth­ers to share and com­mit to that vi­sion.

Per­haps the US State De­part­ment did us a favour by re­vok­ing the OFAC li­cence that al­lowed the NGC/Shell joint ven­ture to pro­ceed with the Drag­on field. Per­haps this will force us to re­view how we man­age the en­er­gy sec­tor and to iden­ti­fy the man­age­ment im­prove­ments that will al­low us to get a big­ger bang for each dol­lar spent.

That was the in­ten­tion of the gas mas­ter plan re­vealed dur­ing the “Spot­light on En­er­gy” in 2018. How much of the plan has been im­ple­ment­ed to date?

The for­mer prime min­is­ter’s com­ment that if the Drag­on project did not come to fruition, our “coo coo” would be cooked ex­em­pli­fies the type of lan­guage and thought process lead­ers must avoid. It speaks to a lan­guage of fail­ure and qui­et des­per­a­tion.

Even in the dark­est mo­ments, there are op­por­tu­ni­ties. Lan­guage is pow­er­ful; it shapes how we think, how we en­vi­sion the world and how we com­mu­ni­cate. How we com­mu­ni­cate al­so in­flu­ences oth­ers to build per­cep­tions and shape iden­ti­ties.

Politi­cians must be care­ful of the lan­guage used on po­lit­i­cal plat­forms and speak a pos­i­tive re­al­i­ty in­to be­ing, to en­gage in the lan­guage of pos­si­bil­i­ty. The na­tion will face many chal­lenges in the fu­ture, but how we ad­just to those chal­lenges de­pends on our ap­proach and at­ti­tude. This re­quires a re­spon­si­ble, ma­ture ap­proach, a plan and a vi­sion that de­fines the fu­ture we want to cre­ate and the dis­ci­pline, ded­i­ca­tion and in­flu­ence to en­cour­age cit­i­zens to move in that di­rec­tion.