Once she thinks about it, Prime Minister Simpson Miller will not be surprised that most people are as surprised and as perplexed as we are at her decision to bring back Donald Buchanan as the Information and Development Minister to replace the fallen Colin Campbell.

People will be similarly surprised too if, as it has been suggested will happen, Mr Buchanan is named as general secretary of the ruling People's National Party (PNP).

Of course, we understand that among many in the ruling party there will be a certain comfort level with Mr. Buchanan; there is this enduring predictability about a man with whom the Nehru suit and the kareeba of the PNP's socialist epoch still find profound favour and with a great capacity for across-the-floor heckling during parliamentary debates. And there is his undeniably profound loyalty to the PNP.

So even as we know that, to his core, Mr. Buchanan is a good and decent man, there are serious questions about whether - even beyond the delicate situation in which Mrs. Simpson Miller's administration finds itself - his are the skills that are required at this time.

Indeed, Mr. Buchanan has held a number of portfolios in government, in this and previous administrations, until he was left out of Mrs. Simpson Miller's Cabinet after she won the presidency of the PNP earlier this year and became Prime Minister. That was logical. Mr. Buchanan had made it clear that he would not seek re-election at the end of the current administration. It made perfect sense that he made way for a Simpson Miller loyalist as she began the process of stamping her authority on the Government.

Unfortunately for Mrs. Simpson Miller, one of those she brought back to the Government and also made general secretary of the party, Colin Campbell, has become the first casualty of the Trafigura Beheer scandal in which the Dutch commodity trading company transferred money to a bank account of Mr. Campbell and other PNP officials, ostensibly as a gift to the party.

Mr. Campbell may not have been many people's favourite person in government, but they sensed that he had a grasp of the information side of his portfolio, to which he brought specific ideas. He knew that the job was not only about updating reporters after weekly Cabinet meetings, but understood that there was a deep nexus between media and modern information and communication technology. Mr. Campbell was aware that these held potentially transformational possibilities for Jamaica's growth and development.

We are not certain that Mr. Buchanan brings either the vision or the nuanced touch required to squeeze the greatest value out of these emerging sectors, notwithstanding how successful he may have been in delivering water and housing solutions to rural communities. Neither are we convinced that Mr. Buchanan's is the type of temperament best suited to push through the negotiations for the many hotel and resort projects that are now being considered.

Indeed, Mr. Buchanan's last significant intervention on behalf of the government should be instructive. It was he who pushed through the disastrous motion to censure Karl Samuda ostensibly because the Opposition member misled the House over Noel Hylton's Sandal's Whitehouse 'report.' A more thoughtful response would have been a simple explanation of the facts.