By Max Sterling
The big story to hit the streets of Grenada on Saturday morning came from the Prime Minister's Friday evening address which was laced with revelations regarding the wanton mismanagement and misbehaviour in public office of the last administration.
According to Prime Minister Thomas "Could you imagine a person, hired to undertake party political work being paid a salary of over 4000 U.S or 10,840 EC dollars a month, 1000 U.S dollars a month for housing and given a government transport all from your tax dollars?"
My guess is that this may relate to Jamaican Everton Price who came in as an NNP Political Strategist for the last election campaign period who may have lasted all of nine months and who was paid from the national treasury instead of by the New National Party (NNP).
There were several other revelations made by our Prime Minister - a man whom we can be proud once again to call Honourable as against the "good for-nothing" who paraded with that Right Honourable title for the last 13 years.
While on the speech delivered by the Honourable Prime Minister who represents his word to a T and whose life epitomises in practice the genuine reconciliation he preaches, I believe he could come to the nation with a little more regularity considering the many things his administration will be unearthing in the early aftermath of Mitchell's expulsion from Government.
Mr. Prime Minister Grenadians need to hear from you more often as you are truly a symbol of decency and genuine hope for a brighter future.
Your regular presence relating important developments to us will serve as a way to debrief and re-brief all of us who have been exposed to total dishonesty and deceit from your predecessor for all of thirteen years.
Mr. Prime Minister I would like to offer the following suggestions for future speeches:
* They should be delivered on Wednesday evenings instead of Friday which is too close to the weekend with many distractions for our people
* They should be ten minutes at maximum.
* They should be properly advertised and not just become a news item two hours ahead of the scheduled time for release.
* The structure should be in character with the deliverer.
On the issue of structure and how it could be in character with the deliverer one individual needs to be assigned to Prime Minister Thomas to shadow him, internalise his words, especially when he speaking off the cuff at interviews, meetings and on regular social occasions.
This person will be able to familiarise himself/herself with PM Thomas' words and therefore be able to give them back to him in his speeches/addresses.
That to me is simple. Convoluted sentences with a full stop a mile away from the beginning of a sentence do not fit into PM Thomas' style. He has always been a humble and simple man whose sentences need to be short but loaded.
Having said that tough, I think if the last address was retrofitted to PM Thomas' style he would have aced it as it really had strong and relevant content. Again, the length needs to be watched especially when it is going to be as loaded as that one was. .
Meaningful Public Relations could be beefed up:
I want to suggest that the Prime Minister calls a retreat of his inner circle to include all senior and junior Ministers and senior party executive members and operatives to discuss a strategy for relating to the public (Professional Public Relations).
I want to suggest further that a professional public relations command center for the dispensation of information to the general public be established in the interim to take care of the responsibility of the government to feed the general public's right to know.
Don't even bother to say that that is what Government Information Service (GIS) is for as the GIS as it currently obtains is not dependable and capable to rise to that level on its own since they have had 13 years of practice to be what they've descended to.
In order to change that culture they too must be reformatted through a professional PR Command Center. Government Ministers and party operatives need to respect the terms of reference of this initiative and submit themselves to the entity so as to have one voice being spoken rather than separate voices saying separate things.
Sir Nicholas Brathwaite administration knew this best during the privatisation process which was massively successful as they empowered a concern to take care of all public information and they did not give the concern directives but submitted themselves to the concern who was a trusted professional who delivered.
That particular concern took on all the propaganda of the then opposition, opened the doors for public dialogue and debates and eventually won public opinion in favour of privatisation notwithstanding the vehemence of the opposition which appeared sad that they were not in office to introduce bribery and corruption to the process of the privatisation of both NCB and GRENLEC."
I told you last week to be patient with the new administration in St. George's as the change you voted for will be delivered unto you all in due course. People must be given a chance to prove their worth and in this case we must give the new government a chance!
The NDC may be considered to be off to a rough start but that is no reason to condemn them since they may never have anticipated things to be as bad as they are right now.
I am confident that part two for Jonah and his accomplices is coming and when that comes there will be loud and thunderous applause.
After all this past weekend, we got some excitement which renewed our hope in a bright future as the new administration has put things in place to bring to justice ONE and ALL for the wanton misbehaviour in public office over the last thirteen years.
It is my understanMÔê$Pýwas taken abGŸ`with a bout of nausea to include vomiting and diarrhea when the Wildman news broke.
I want to warn all of you that round two for Mitchell must not be on a take all basis. We have had the experience of the folks on the hill who are likely to be released shortly the more of them who were arrested and charged was the less the chances of getting them to speak on each other.
Wildman is more important to us on the outside as we endeavour to see Jonah closed in on. The power is over and no one wants to share a jail cell with Jonah in these down times.
If the new administration does what it is supposed to do, very shortly Jonah's turn will come. Wildman's high blood pressure erupted on him partially when he was in the police station, you could imagine what will happen to Jonah when he hears the first door slam after him in a police station before he gets to the real Badang Bang on Richmond Hill?
I want to encourage every law abiding, honest Grenadian to enjoy every minute of the next five years as much as I intend to. Grenada is ours not theirs and the NDC under Prime Minister Tillman Thomas has come to give it back to us!
Jonah! The jail is waiting!
