Head­ing to­wards the cli­max of Car­ni­val 2026, the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives and Sen­ate, which both sat yes­ter­day, were work­ing apace like Car­ni­val artistes— back-to-back.

Each dealt with is­sues rel­e­vant to peo­ple. In the House, the Land Ac­qui­si­tion Or­der (re­gard­ing ti­tles for HDC Cau­ra hous­es) and Copy­right Bill (ex­pand­ing pro­tec­tion of cre­ations). In the Sen­ate, the Bail Amend­ment Bill (en­sur­ing the le­git­i­ma­cy of as­sets used for bail).

As­pects in all con­tribute to the econ­o­my. If is­sues re­gard­ing that T&T lifeblood source aren’t clear, to­day’s Skin­ner Park Ca­lyp­so Fi­es­ta par­tic­i­pants may like­ly con­vey it in their inim­itable style.

Not be­cause Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi, at Tues­day’s Sen­ate de­bate, pre­dict­ed that, as he de­scribed the sea­son as be­ing “sub­dued” as dur­ing COVID-19. It’s been gen­er­al­ly low­er key. Cer­tain pop­u­lar fetes’ tick­et sales are down. Rat­ings for oth­ers, “Meh” sta­tus. State cost-cut­ting re­mov­ing blocks of North Stand spec­ta­tors.

This, fol­low­ing a per­fect storm of fac­tors—be­yond the ail­ing econ­o­my pre-gen­er­al elec­tion—all ig­nit­ed to­geth­er in the new Gov­ern­ment’s re­set.

Job loss­es re­mov­ing mon­ey from cir­cu­la­tion. Slug­gish en­er­gy prices be­neath Bud­get pro­jec­tions. Dis­cre­tionary and in­creased tax­es. The HDC trans­fer “In­her­i­tance” tax is al­so the sec­ond is­sue re­veal­ing Hous­ing Min­is­ter David Lee be­ing un­aware of HDC chair­man Feeroz Khan’s ac­tion.

If all eco­nom­ic fac­tors re­sult in ar­ti­fi­cial­ly in­duced “re­ces­sion,” enough eco­nom­ic ex­perts have weighed in, for T&T’s chal­lenge to be clear.

Amid this, the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund’s team is un­der­tak­ing its usu­al an­nu­al re­view.

Last Oc­to­ber, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dave Tan­coo stressed there would be no de­val­u­a­tion or “go­ing to” the IMF” seek­ing as­sis­tance. Tan­coo ad­mit­ted he hadn’t thought T&T was as bad­ly off as it is, but he vowed a five-year re­build­ing plan.

The IMF team’s been in T&T since last week meet­ing var­i­ous Gov­ern­ment min­istries, in­clud­ing Fi­nance, Trade, and En­er­gy. Fi­nance sources in­di­cate that Tan­coo’s ex­pressed con­cern to the IMF about their rec­om­men­da­tions in the past and at his first meet­ing with the IMF, about his be­lief that the IMF has a pre­con­ceived con­clu­sion to push T&T in­to a struc­tur­al ad­just­ment pack­age, in­clud­ing de­val­u­a­tion of T&T’s cur­ren­cy, slash­ing of the lev­el of sub­si­dies and oth­er­wise.

They added that Tan­coo open­ly ad­vised that Gov­ern­ment’s recog­nised the fis­cal and mon­e­tary chal­lenges in­her­it­ed from the for­mer regime and has iden­ti­fied plans to ad­dress them with­out the se­vere mea­sures the IMF wants to im­ple­ment. They in­di­cat­ed Tan­coo be­lieves the IMF agen­da does not con­sid­er so­cial and eco­nom­ic fac­tors— and his meet­ing with the IMF was “bel­liger­ent and com­bat­ive.”

It’s been made clear that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment would con­sid­er the peo­ple and coun­try in deal­ing with what’s per­ceived as moves “to get the ad­min­is­tra­tion in­to fol­low­ing struc­tur­al ad­just­ment mea­sures and IMF de­pen­den­cy.” IMF’s team is ex­pect­ed to meet Fi­nance again next week.

Yes­ter­day, Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials cit­ed re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion push, US Em­bassy eco­nom­ic/po­lit­i­cal coun­sel­lor Scott Hansen’s op­ti­mism on the en­er­gy sec­tor’s post-2026 fu­ture and pos­si­ble re­fin­ery move­ment.

There was no re­sponse on how cost-cut­ting caters for high salaried hir­ings such as at WASA. Else­where, it’s con­firmed that wher­ev­er re­fin­ery in­vest­ment goes, the OW­TU re­tains its in­ten­tion of be­ing part of the restart and is con­sol­i­dat­ing work to­wards this.

On Wednes­day, the IMF met the Op­po­si­tion, in­clud­ing for­mer Fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert. If there was no crit­i­cism of T&T by the PNM, it could have been since they were in charge for the past decade—and would like to be again.

If there were ques­tions on what the PNM would do dif­fer­ent­ly now, replies would have in­clud­ed us­ing the (now re­moved) T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty and in­volv­ing the IMF’s Tax Di­ag­nos­tic As­sess­ment Tool.

As T&T’s pri­or­i­ty prob­lem, the econ­o­my’s health pre­dicts the state of its sec­ond is­sue—se­cu­ri­ty. While Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s warn­ing to crim­i­nals and threat of an­oth­er state of emer­gency took “in front” to ward off an ex­plo­sion of post-SoE crime, T&T Po­lice Ser­vice is­sues re­main an­oth­er mat­ter. Par­tic­u­lar­ly, the Po­lice Com­plaints Au­thor­i­ty probe of the po­lice-in­volved fa­tal shoot­ing of Joshua Sama­roo and maim­ing of his wife Ka­ia Sealy. It’s un­der­stood the probe won’t be rushed and will in­volve an ex­treme­ly thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion: all ev­i­dence, in­clud­ing the post-mortem re­port and wit­ness state­ments.

More im­me­di­ate­ly ahead: rec­om­men­da­tions and de­c­la­ra­tions. Not just from Skin­ner Park.