Twenty months after vaulting Kamla Persad-Bissessar into the Prime Minister's seat, Jack Warner has been stripped of responsibility for the billion-dollar highway to Point Fortin. Until further notice Warner is "Minister of a piece of Works". Having had transport excised from his portfolio and the multi-million dollar PURE project shut down, Warner, once queen-maker and de-facto PM, is neither.

A post-Carnival showdown between Warner and his political leader could be another distraction from the major issues requiring full political attention. It is all driven by a temporariness which has marked the PM's 20 months and counting.

Apart from still-steady crime and social decline, the PM has an economy that has failed to grow since 2008. In his January 16 update on the economy the Governor of the Central Bank pointed to economic contraction in 2011, output declines in energy and non-energy and rising food prices which could quickly fuel inflation. Beyond the high level data businessmen are complaining about the lethargy of the economy and the failure of the Government to provoke and provide the circumstances for growth.

This is not accidental but indicative of the fact that the PM has not set her thoughts on the tone of her leadership and the engagement which would stir the society. Instead her Government has riled opinion and eroded goodwill. The task of the PM should have been threefold: stabilising, changing and sustaining. Where she has placed her Government is in a constant state of defence and uncertainty. It is not insignificant that her frequent travel, her failure to occupy the PM's residence and the constant presence of handlers around her is increasingly suggestive of her own temporariness, discomfort and lack of confidence outside her happy zone.

Instead of temporarily taking on the drug interdiction part of National Security and now adding Warner's highway to her plate, the country would have been happier to see the PM take full responsibility for National Security and crime in particular. But this is not about national priorities and leadership; it is about survival and having friends around. Characteristically, the National Security units have been restored to their former place and soon enough Warner's highway will pass to a Cabinet favourite.

This is a tough world for any political leader; it is particularly difficult for one who measures leadership by personal happiness and the handshakes of chums. Inevitably, outside of the happy zone she has created, there are realities which will cause the PM much grief unless she abandons dress-up and begins to lead.

After more than 50 years the People's National Movement (PNM) remains the country's default setting for political leadership. Its first general election loss in 1986 was savage, and still the party was able to leverage three seats in the House and six in the Senate into a winning general election position five years later. Edged out of office in 1995, the party returned in 2002. Beaten again in 2010, the party never seems out of the race to get back in. The country it seems has crafted an electoral system in which another party gets a chance of leading when the electorate believes the PNM needs to be punished out of power.

But even with its political constancy, the PNM and the other parties which have run the course must face up to the new demands of government and governance. In the current global environment every political leader faces three basic challenges: global economic instability marked by its persistence and changing DNA; engaged but random electorates and changing scorecards in which expectations are not fixed, voices are competing and tipping points are not necessarily predictable.

Across the globe, these challenges are marked by triumph in the removal of leaders but not in the quality of their replacements. Leading today calls for balance, broad-based and deep talent pools, and discipline in which leadership is highly responsive but gracious in making tough, unpopular calls. In that sense no previous leader in this country can make the cut. The question is whether any current leader will.

Part of the change in the way the electorate faces the political leadership is that political monologue is dead and dialogue must not only be with the opposing political side but with various groups, some online and unseen. The political leadership finds itself answerable to a global citizenry which, prior to the wide deployment of the internet and social media merely caught the Carnival and the calypso and assumed that Dr Williams was still in power. In the face of shifting views, changing sides and myriad tipping points the search for consensus and collective responsibility is time-consuming and sometimes pedantic. Instead the country would be more settled with political leadership it can trust even while it remains vigilant.

But the politicians it seems do not have trust within their own organisations. The PM's dismantling of Warner has been incremental. It takes a while to settle into governing and work on staying in Government. The UNC has been through that, with more sweat than success. By now the UNC has new sources of future support, shrinking Warner's significance. It creates a happy confluence for the PM, boosting her confidence in reducing Warner. Still this is the sort of UNC machination which will cause the electorate to cast furtive glances to the PNM, the default setting to which it usually turns at its peril.

Dismantling Warner may expand the PM's happy zone or open the doors to more grief. It depends on how Warner carries on as "Minister of a piece of Works", how quickly the PM resolves her temporariness and how much she understands that the tone of political leadership in response to known challenges must come from her.

• Clarence Rambharat is a lawyer and university lecturer