The Dickon Mitchell-led administration is running the risk of losing a lot of support from “the middle and lower levels of the public service” due to its continued failure to lessen the influence of many of the operatives of the former ruling party.
A senior qualified public officer who is known to be a strong supporter of the ruling National Democratic Congress (NDC) called THE NEW TODAY to complain about the decision of the 14-month old administration to allow these pro-NNP public officers to hold onto their top positions even if their competence level is questionable.
“I believe that they are already losing them (the middle and lower echelon of the public service),” she said.
According to the public officer, these state employees “are becoming so frustrated” as they expected the NDC to carry out the so-called Transformational Agenda that it campaigned upon to win the June 2022 general election.
“They were so excited when NDC won – these are the people who were willing to give NDC information (about the wrong-doing of the former NNP regime),” she said.
The officer who holds a top position in the public service expressed concern that Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell and his ministers have allowed “the NNP Senior Management” that was running the service prior to the change of government to frustrate and muzzle those public sector employees who were suspected of not being aligned to the previous regime.
She said these well-known NNP operatives who are now in total control under the NDC leaders are now “coming back and making the same decision that they were making over the last 10 years.”
She added that the pro-NDC public officers “are becoming very upset” and feared that this will be one of the reasons for what was termed the derailment of the Dickon Mitchell-led government before the next general election.
The senior public officer indicated that if the Dickon Mitchell government loses the next general election it will not be like the 2008-13 period when Congress under Tillman Thomas collapsed in office due to infighting between two of the major players who came out of the 1979-83 Grenada Revolutionary era.
“It is going to be a situation similar to what Keith (Mitchell) faced where people had this expectation of good governance, a transformative initiative and then realising that is not so, it’s just nepotism, doing the same thing over and over – it’s just the same run-of-the mill operation and people are going to get disenchanted and move away from them”.
She warned the NDC to try and nip “in the bud” this trajectory that the government has now found itself in as this might turn out “to be detrimental for them” in terms of holding onto the seat of power at the Botanical Gardens at Tanteen.
Several public officers are known to have voted for NDC over NNP due to its commitment to honour the court ruling on Pension payments in keeping with the terms and conditions as laid out in the Grenada Constitution.
Prime Minister Dickon Mitchell emerged from the general election with a comfortable 9-6 victory at the polls over the NNP of Keith Mitchell.
Since then, former NNP Social Development Minister Delma Thomas has crossed the floor to give Congress a 10-5 majority in Parliament.