As much as it de­pends com­plete­ly on Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Gov­ern­ment to lay out a plan for the fu­ture in to­day's 2026 Bud­get, there is al­so a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty bear­ing down on the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment to en­gage in se­ri­ous dis­cus­sion and de­bate af­ter the pre­sen­ta­tion is made. We dare say, it will not on­ly be an op­por­tu­ni­ty to throw stones, but for se­ri­ous al­ter­na­tives up­on which the pop­u­la­tion can make judge­ments.

But while the par­lia­men­tary re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is with the elect­ed Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion, all of the in­sti­tu­tions and peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go have a vest­ed in­ter­est in the eco­nom­ic, po­lit­i­cal and so­cial fu­ture, and cit­i­zens must act as if we do.

The col­lec­tive “we”, the peo­ple, the busi­ness in­sti­tu­tions, the trade unions, the pro­fes­sion­al as­so­ci­a­tions, the en­ter­tain­ment in­dus­try, the farm­ers, the con­trac­tors, toute bagai, have an ab­solute­ly piv­otal role to play in whether the for­tunes of the coun­try are re­stored or sunk fur­ther af­ter the Bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion is made.

As is self-ev­i­dent, T&T is at a crit­i­cal stage of its ex­is­tence. It’s not the time for prac­ticed crit­i­cism, ole talk and mau­vais langue to pre­vail. We have to find a way out of the fi­nan­cial and eco­nom­ic cri­sis, and ideas, plans and pro­grammes do not re­side in one place with one group of plan­ners and ad­min­is­tra­tors.

What is more, the two ma­jor par­ties in gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion over the post-In­de­pen­dence pe­ri­od, whether they want to ac­knowl­edge it or not, have been cen­tral to the fail­ure to trans­form the econ­o­my away from its all but com­plete de­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor.

The con­tention over the Drag­on gas project finds the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment and the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress at­tempt­ing to counter each oth­er, both want­i­ng to lay what may be re­ferred to as pos­i­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for the project. At the same time, they heap blame on each oth­er for the un­cer­tain­ty of the mo­ment.

But notwith­stand­ing the squab­bling be­tween the two, the re­al­i­ty is that the ma­jor play­ers who will de­ter­mine the out­come of the Drag­on deal, pos­i­tive or neg­a­tive, are the Unit­ed States and Venezuela. They are the ones fight­ing the hemi­spher­ic geopo­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic wars.

If the two ma­jor par­ties in Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion are to act in the ben­e­fi­cial in­ter­est of this coun­try, there must be a lev­el of ac­cord, es­pe­cial­ly on the is­sue of hon­est­ly in­form­ing the pop­u­la­tion of what ex­ists. The ul­ti­mate ques­tion is how do we as a coun­try meet the chal­lenges ahead?

The two main par­ties have to con­struct a plat­form for the peo­ple who vot­ed them in­to Par­lia­ment to stand on and to be able to par­tic­i­pate mean­ing­ful­ly in, not mere­ly re­gard­ing the Bud­get 2026 and the Drag­on, but how to re­store and con­struct a plat­form for ad­vance­ment. One ma­jor re­spon­si­bil­i­ty is for full in­for­ma­tion and analy­sis be­ing put for­ward to al­low the par­tic­i­pa­tion by the own­ers of T&T - the pop­u­la­tion.

In the de­bate on the Bud­get go­ing for­ward, the in­sti­tu­tions and the pop­u­la­tion, as re­ferred to above, must wedge them­selves firm­ly in­to the dis­cus­sion. This is be­cause “we the peo­ple and in­sti­tu­tions” have an ab­solute right in the dis­cus­sion and de­bate; we have no way of es­cap­ing the con­se­quences of in­suf­fi­cient plan­ning and pro­gram­ming.