Before my August break, I gave glimpses of my growing impatience with the new Government (and I am not referring to it as "new" after today). It is now more than three months since it took office. It is time to assume the demeanour of a Government. The time for settling in is up.

I agree that the Local Government elections should have been held immediately but the Cabinet has had time to spare. The Prime Minister and bloated entourage took a dubious ten day trip to New York. Reading some of the reports of the New York tour I fear that the high living, decadent TIDCO posse of the Panday time era was back.

If the Prime Minister wished to walk in a parade in New York, the West Indian Day parade, preceding mas' on the Parkway, was the thing to do. I understand that the current US Ambassador to Trinidad and Tobago will be doing just that tomorrow.

At that parade the Prime Minster would have met the US Senators for New York, Mayor Bloomberg and other notables, as well as bonded with important Trini diaspora leaders. She was badly advised to omit it from her choice of parades. Perhaps the misprinted and misplaced Press Secretary did not have enough boy days to know what is what in the Trni socio-cultural structure.

Time is up, People's Partnership, for the gallery of victory. Let me first, after my two week August break, recap the concerns I had been expressing between mid June and mid August: Individualistic outbursts by members of Cabinet comprising either unseemly personal attacks or off the cuff statements, which concern fundamental policy issues, obvious lack of teamwork, dissatisfaction with the placement of special advisers and hidden lobbyists, such as ex-ministers, with access to and secretly operating within the engine room of the Government.

I also asked the Government to take a whiff of purifying oxygen and to avoid resurrecting ghosts of the pilfering past. Another concern was the promised removal of the ACIB from the portfolio of the Attorney General, in fulfillment of a specific campaign promise. This has not happened with the result that the very capable Mr Ramlogan is being seen as a hatchet man rather than the measured Chief Legal Adviser to the Government.

Meanwhile the charade about so-called implementation of the death penalty continues without reference to the unavoidable need for amendments to the Constitution if that is the direction in which the Government wishes to go. Moreover you cannot hang persons you cannot apprehend and convict.

Many of us are also satisfied that the $3,000 per month pension is a sham when measured against the relevant campaign promises. The prudent (some might say the honest) thing to have done was to provide it without qualification at age 65, provided the senior citizen was not in employment, and confess and avoid consideration of pension at age 60.

Dr Rowley, Leader of the Opposition, had generously suggested that two months or three at the outside might be a reasonable transition period. That time has gone. If the budget statement, which is scheduled for September 8, 2010, does not provide a coherent policy statement of the allocation of public funds with detailed social development objectives, it will be no different from the aimless squandermania of the PNM.

Will the Budget statement disclose the date for repeal of the property tax and what, if anything is to be put in its place? What is the precise future of the Alutrint smelter site?

To what extent is the Government withdrawing from being the prime mover in the economy, currently in limbo? Will a hard look being taken at the NIDCOs, NEDCOs and TIDCOs, symbolic of the dangerous state enterprise sector that leads politicians into temptation and lines the pockets of the flatterers and fawners? Trends suggest that we may simply have new feeders at the troughs.

The time is also up, Partnership, for blaming the PNM. The country gave you an impressive mandate to fix things and the tolerance fuse of the country is short, growing shorter each time it takes the risk of trying something different and is subsequently bitterly disappointed.

No less a person than President Obama, who set the world alight, has seen his ratings decline even though it is acknowledged that he inherited many difficulties created by his predecessor. In a recent column in the New York Times, Maureen Dowd said this and it constitutes advice the Partnership should heed: "Obama is the victim of the elevated expectations he so skillfully created in 2008. He came as a redeemer and didn't redeem. Nothing bums out a nation that blows with the wind like a self imposed messiah who disappoints."

I cannot over emphasise that is time to finish the extensive inauguration in which the Partnership has indulged. The country will not easily handle another political disappointment.