“Look on de brighter side be­cause I see ah sil­ver lin­ing be­hind this grey cloud wey pass­ing … Look on the brighter side …” —Black Stal­in

The US de­ci­sion to re­voke the li­cence it gave T&T and Venezuela to pur­sue the Drag­on-plus agree­ment is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties to con­vince the elec­torate of poli­cies and pro­grammes to counter the ex­pect­ed neg­a­tive ef­fects of the can­celled arrange­ment.

The par­ties now have to leave de ole talk and mau­vais langue be­hind and ar­tic­u­late strate­gies, poli­cies and pro­grammes to es­tab­lish growth sec­tors, not to elim­i­nate the need and hope for the pos­si­bil­i­ty of work­ing with Venezuela some­time in the fu­ture, but rather to meet the needs of the present.

It may be an elec­toral ben­e­fit to whichev­er par­ty is able to suc­cess­ful­ly con­vince the na­tion of vot­ers that it is ca­pa­ble of think­ing and ap­ply­ing ap­pro­pri­ate ini­tia­tives and poli­cies which can pick up the slack left by the present end of the gas col­lab­o­ra­tion.

Per­haps such well-thought-out pro­grammes, in­clu­sive of ar­tic­u­lat­ing on the pos­si­ble oth­er hy­dro­car­bon projects, can en­tice the 30 to 35 per cent of vot­ers who con­sis­tent­ly refuse to vote for ei­ther of the ma­jor par­ties to turn out at the polling sta­tions on elec­tion day.

Such a cam­paign that ar­tic­u­lates al­ter­na­tives will be a re­lief for those por­tions of the elec­torate who feel be­sieged and with­out ben­e­fit from the night­ly ex­plo­sion of ir­rel­e­vance.

Ad­mit­ted­ly, it’s a long shot, but if the par­ties and their sup­port­ers ap­ply them­selves to the chal­lenges that “can be the sil­ver lin­ing be­hind this grey cloud wey pass­ing,” both for the par­ty and the coun­try.

Such a pro­gramme of al­ter­na­tives pre­sent­ed in a con­struc­tive and de­tailed man­ner as to how the chal­lenges can be over­come, even if in the short term, will sure­ly have trac­tion in the cam­paign­ing en­vi­ron­ment which has so far stu­dious­ly avoid­ed hear­ing from the par­ties on how the trans­for­ma­tion of the so­ci­ety and econ­o­my will be tack­led if vot­ed in­to of­fice.

As to the as­sess­ment of Stu­art Young’s ca­pa­bil­i­ty to make a dif­fer­ence as Prime Min­is­ter, his ten-year pe­ri­od of be­ing in of­fice across ma­jor port­fo­lios, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, min­is­ter of en­er­gy and a few stints as act­ing prime min­is­ter is a fair pur­suit.

The an­swer is easy to con­clude. He made lit­tle im­pres­sion on those min­istries ex­cept in re­la­tion to the Min­istry of En­er­gy. What­ev­er else can be said about him: he worked hard and long to se­cure the Drag­on deal and oth­er en­er­gy projects. That Pres­i­dent Trump was de­ter­mined to get back at Maduro for op­pos­ing him in the last term of of­fice is not a blame that can be fair­ly at­tached to Young.

The de­ter­mi­na­tion of his ca­pac­i­ty now has to be on his per­for­mance dur­ing the cam­paign, and that is where he should be judged. Has he been putting for­ward plans and pro­grammes to deal with the ma­jor prob­lems of so­ci­ety and such plans which are po­ten­tial­ly vi­able?

Like with the oth­er ma­jor par­ty and its leader, we have not heard from PM Young on a com­pre­hen­sive set of plans and pro­grammes to tack­le the neg­a­tives of the so­ci­ety, econ­o­my and poli­ty in any mean­ing­ful man­ner. It seems as if the prac­tice of par­ties pro­duc­ing and dis­trib­ut­ing man­i­festos con­tain­ing the plans and pro­grammes is now some­thing of the past.

Al­ter­na­tive­ly, it may be a strat­e­gy of the par­ties to fol­low a prac­tice of re­leas­ing a man­i­festo at the last mo­ment when it can­not be ful­ly as­sessed by in­de­pen­dent vot­ers.

Not leav­ing be­hind a writ­ten man­i­festo which out­lines in a spe­cif­ic man­ner the par­ty’s in­ten­tions and ex­pect­ed prac­tice may be a means of not al­low­ing for foot­prints to be left be­hind which can be traced to hold re­spon­si­ble, whichev­er par­ty that is cho­sen by the elec­torate to gov­ern for the next five years.

The chal­lenge I am pos­ing is spe­cif­ic: the par­ties must demon­strate to and con­vince el­e­ments of the elec­torate not strick­en by race and par­ty af­fil­i­a­tion of an ap­proach to al­ter­na­tives which can min­imise the un­doubt­ed neg­a­tive ef­fects the loss of the Drag­on arrange­ment will have on the econ­o­my. No wishy-washy, hope­ful promis­es to per­suade the US Gov­ern­ment to re­verse its de­ci­sion can be a re­al test of the abil­i­ties of the par­ties and their lead­ers.

Pres­i­dent Trump was ob­vi­ous­ly not per­suad­ed by any con­sid­er­a­tion of the needs of T&T and the Caribbean when he de­cid­ed to scut­tle the Drag­on deal; he was sim­ply pur­su­ing his own agen­da. There­fore, any de­ci­sion to re­verse his orig­i­nal po­si­tion will not eas­i­ly yield to any sen­ti­men­tal af­fil­i­a­tion to this coun­try and the re­gion and/or to any po­lit­i­cal leader, even if such per­sons may think that he/she is so favoured.

As stat­ed at the top, the re­moval of the op­por­tu­ni­ties which were in the Drag­on arrange­ment must be in­ter­pret­ed as a re­al test of the po­lit­i­cal par­ties and the abil­i­ties of their lead­ers to de­liv­er. The mean­ing­ful­ness of the test is that it is alive, un­avoid­able, ex­is­ten­tial and can force the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers and their par­ties to come for­ward with a re­sponse to an ab­solute need of the present.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and news di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, and grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and St Au­gus­tine–In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions. He can be reached at tfrasertt@gmail.com