ABSTRACT
If your background is in the private sector, you may not immediately comprehend the public sector obsession with politicians. The Minister, after all, is not God. (This may not always be apparent from the behaviour of the people in the immediate vicinity, or indeed the behaviour of the Minister.) But Ministers are empowered by law to give directions to their departments that must be obeyed. Government agencies are only too well aware they may spend many years and much of their budget developing a strategic project, only for an incoming Government to decide it is the wrong project and bin it. The Minister’s power and influence over your project is real.
