Kevon Felmine

While most cit­i­zens are bask­ing in a sense of na­tion­al pride as they cel­e­brate the coun­try's 50th an­niver­sary of be­com­ing an in­de­pen­dent na­tion, it con­tin­ues to be plagued by in­ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance. "At this 50th mile­stone, we should, how­ev­er, ad­mit that we are hav­ing very se­ri­ous prob­lems and de­spite the rep­e­ti­tion of the same prob­lems, no so­lu­tions seem to be forth­com­ing."

This was the view of pres­i­dent of the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion (Do­ma), Gre­go­ry Aboud, who called for change in the coun­try's gov­er­nance mod­el. Aboud was ad­dress­ing mem­bers of the Port-of-Spain Ro­tary Club yes­ter­day at a lun­cheon held at the club's of­fice on Fitzblack­man Dri­ve, Port-of-Spain. In a thought-pro­vok­ing de­liv­ery, Aboud called on cit­i­zens to con­sid­er re­plac­ing one of the na­tion­al watch­words, "tol­er­ance," with the word "ac­count­abil­i­ty."

He said Trinidad and To­ba­go had in­her­it­ed an old-world mod­el of gov­er­nance which was ad­just­ed by re­plac­ing ac­count­abil­i­ty with loy­al­ty. This, he said, had cre­at­ed a com­pos­ite sys­tem of gov­er­nance that de­liv­ered on­ly poor re­sults. Re­fer­ring to the melt­down of fi­nan­cial gi­ant Cli­co, Aboud said: "Here is a so­ci­ety in which bil­lions of dol­lars evap­o­rat­ed in sev­er­al Ponzi schemes. Those re­spon­si­ble for the loss are free to en­joy their lives, while a Ras­ta man caught with a half-stick of mar­i­jua­na is hand­cuffed and thrown in­to jail for years; or a taxi dri­ver that stops to pick up a pas­sen­ger for a $4 fare is giv­en a $1,000 tick­et.

"Here is a so­ci­ety in which the Mar­aval Riv­er has choked un­der the same bridges for the past 30 years and all the var­i­ous agen­cies and of­fi­cers that did noth­ing about it not on­ly kept their jobs, but were even­tu­al­ly giv­en salary in­creas­es as well. "And this re­al­ly is not the fault of any­one in par­tic­u­lar...if you have a flawed mod­el that wants loy­al­ty more than per­for­mance, these are the flawed re­sult."

He said the lack of ac­count­abil­i­ty and weak­ened rep­re­sen­ta­tion of con­stituents had led to re­duced de­liv­ery in al­most every gov­ern­ment ser­vice, from the re­new­al of dri­vers' per­mits and pass­ports to the wait­ing time for surgery. He said the low at­ten­dance of teach­ers in schools and the in­creas­ing num­bers of mur­ders were al­so cause for con­cern.

He asked, "Where in this mod­el is the rep­re­sen­ta­tion promised by democ­ra­cy? And where is the ac­count­abil­i­ty of the MP to his con­stituents? And why are we sur­prised by the rep­e­ti­tion of the same fail­ings and the seem­ing im­po­tence of mon­ey to solve our prob­lems?" Aboud sought to ex­plain the na­tion's plight, say­ing be­cause an MP was ap­point­ed to the Cab­i­net on ad­vice of the Prime Min­is­ter, he or she was now in­debt­ed to the PM. This means that they then fol­low what­ev­er po­si­tion the PM takes.

"In this sense, our Par­lia­ment al­most op­er­ates like an elec­tion cam­paign com­mit­tee, with favourable light be­ing shone by the Gov­ern­ment MPs and the op­po­site from the oth­er side of the floor. In this mod­el we can eas­i­ly be tempt­ed to see the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance as the cam­paign trea­sur­er and the PM as the cam­paign man­ag­er." He added: "The an­tique West­min­ster mod­el of gov­ern­ment which we adopt­ed still serves some so­ci­eties well, but is clear­ly in­ad­e­quate in our case...The win­ning par­ty con­trols every­thing.

"The Prime Min­is­ter of the day fills the Cab­i­net with MPs. A cab­i­net post­ing, sup­pos­ed­ly a man­age­r­i­al match be­tween com­pe­tence and task, be­comes a type of re­ward for po­lit­i­cal suc­cess. The MP in ques­tion now has a port­fo­lio on be­half of the en­tire coun­try and ob­vi­ous­ly, has lit­tle or no time for his con­stituents." He said on the is­sues of crime, ed­u­ca­tion, health­care and nat­ur­al dis­as­ters, gov­ern­ments had cen­tralised every­thing from man­age­ment and tax­es to con­trol.

He said the for­mer colo­nial gov­ern­ment had left an ef­fec­tive man­age­ment mod­el for lo­cal gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing the use of coun­ty coun­cils, mu­nic­i­pal boards and lo­cal war­dens. This, he said, iden­ti­fied who was re­spon­si­ble for var­i­ous tasks. How­ev­er, dur­ing the post-in­de­pen­dence era, there was a change which pro­tect­ed such in­di­vid­u­als from ap­praisals so that in­com­ing gov­ern­ments could not re­move those whose loy­al­ty was re­ward­ed with a job.

"How could we not know that un­der this post-in­de­pen­dent hy­brid mod­el, we would nev­er be able to stop un­want­ed hill­side de­vel­op­ment or im­prove the slug­gish port op­er­a­tions that are adding to the con­stant up­ward pres­sure to our in­fla­tion rate? "And where, oh where are the elite of this so­ci­ety, that they could nev­er run their busi­ness us­ing the mod­el with which we are run­ning the coun­try?" Aboud called on cit­i­zens to be­come aware of the need to dis­con­nect the ties of the MPs to the Prime Min­is­ter.