The re­cent pass­ing to the great be­yond of Baroness Mar­garet Thatch­er has brought to my mind an ar­ti­cle in a dai­ly news­pa­per in Feb­ru­ary 1994 which was head­ed, Thatcherite dis­ci­ples come to town.

This ar­ti­cle was writ­ten by well-known, re­spect­ed and com­pe­tent jour­nal­ist of long­stand­ing David Ren­wick and high­light­ed a vis­it to T&T of two staff mem­bers of the Adam Smith In­sti­tute Con­sul­tan­cy (ASI) of Lon­don, Eng­land. In­deed, I re­mind my­self of my own in­volve­ment with and sub­se­quent vis­it to the of­fices of the ASI. What, then, does the ti­tle of the in­sti­tute con­vey? What is its re­la­tion­ship with Thatch­erism as im­plied by Ren­wick? In­deed, what was the pos­si­ble con­nec­tion be­tween the Iron La­dy be­ing re­put­ed in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as be­ing the "prime mover" in the dis­man­tling of the So­vi­et Union and state cap­i­tal­ism and the rel­a­tive­ly small na­tion of T&T?

Well, the work of the ASI, as may be gleaned from its ti­tle, was based on the ba­sic prin­ci­ples of the great British clas­si­cal econ­o­mist Adam Smith, which pro­vid­ed the foun­da­tion for the Thatch­er/Rea­gan eco­nom­ic phi­los­o­phy.

Here, there­fore, we may re­call that Adam Smith had pos­tu­lat­ed that by free com­pe­ti­tion and spe­cial­i­sa­tion in the mar­ket for goods and ser­vices, to­tal wel­fare, both in­di­vid­u­al­ly and na­tion­al­ly, would be max­imised. The ma­jor lim­i­ta­tion be­ing the size of the mar­ket it­self. Smith was re­lent­less in his at­tack on mo­nop­oly and mo­nop­o­lis­tic sit­u­a­tions.

It is in­ter­est­ing to note that the of­fices of the ASI were lo­cat­ed with­in walk­ing dis­tance of the British Hous­es of Par­lia­ment and that among its pa­trons were such no­table per­son­al­i­ties as Lord Blake, Vis­count Lord Mont­gomery and Lord Tay­lor.

One sensed a some­what cru­sad­ing spir­it in the work of the in­sti­tute, the aim of which be­ing the pro­mul­ga­tion of Thatch­erism.

The vis­it of the "dis­ci­ples" to T&T was rec­om­mend­ed to the au­thor­i­ties by Prof Ken­neth Julien, then chair­man of T&TEC, in­ter alia, who had been on a vis­it to the Unit­ed King­dom, along with Emile Charles, then chief ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cer of the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty.

In keep­ing with their fun­da­men­tal op­er­at­ing prin­ci­ples, the ASI rec­om­mend­ed:

1. the pri­vati­sa­tion of T&TEC and TSTT;

2. the es­tab­lish­ment of a Com­pe­ti­tion Au­thor­i­ty whose du­ty would be to pro­vide, as far as prac­ti­ca­ble, a "lev­el play­ing field"

3. a re­vamped reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, the modus operan­di of which would, in light of the rec­om­men­da­tions at items 1 and 2, be dif­fer­ent from those of the then ex­ist­ing Pub­lic Util­i­ties Com­mis­sion.

Here it should be not­ed that the Port Au­thor­i­ty (which one min­is­ter had in­di­cat­ed was to be op­er­at­ed by a non-gov­ern­ment en­ti­ty along com­mer­cial lines), as well as the PTSC, have more or less re­turned to al­most com­plete min­is­te­r­i­al con­trol to­day, leav­ing the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion with ju­ris­dic­tion over the T&TEC and WASA on­ly.

It is clear to this writer that, notwith­stand­ing some ini­tial in­di­ca­tions to the con­trary, the rec­om­men­da­tions of the ASI were ac­cept­ed and im­ple­ment­ed on­ly par­tial­ly by the Gov­ern­ment of T&T.

This is clear from the fol­low­ing:

1) the ini­tial split­ting of the gen­er­a­tion and dis­tri­b­u­tion func­tions of T&TEC with the for­mer be­ing a part-pri­vate gov­ern­ment en­ti­ty, has, in fact, been abort­ed with the gen­er­a­tion func­tion hav­ing re­turned to state own­er­ship, thus leav­ing a some­what mi­nus­cule pri­vate in­volve­ment in the na­tion­al grid in the form of Trin­i­ty Pow­er;

(2) the reg­u­la­to­ry frame­work, which had in­ten­tion­al­ly been fash­ioned for en­ti­ties op­er­at­ing in a com­pet­i­tive en­vi­ron­ment, has found it­self hav­ing to han­dle bod­ies which have re­mained ei­ther as mo­nop­o­lies or near-mo­nop­o­lies:

(3) Mervyn As­sam's Fair Trade Bil, on which much work was done, is yet to reach the precincts of the Par­lia­ment;

(4) How­ev­er, it is per­haps in the field of telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions that im­ple­men­ta­tion may be said to have been in ac­cor­dance with those of the con­sul­tants; Thus, the TSTT has, no doubt, due in part to tech­ni­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al con­sid­er­a­tions as well, has been opened up to com­pe­ti­tion, both in its core and an­cil­lary ser­vices, with reg­u­la­tion be­ing in the hands of the T&T Telecom­mu­ni­ca­tions Au­thor­i­ty.

Need­less to say, on a gen­er­al note, the float­ing of the TT dol­lar could be seen as be­ing with­in the con­text of the Thatch­er/Rea­gan poli­cies of world eco­nom­ic lib­er­al­i­sa­tion. Fi­nal­ly, I ven­ture to say that Ren­wick's de­scrip­tion of the vis­i­tors was quite apt.

Er­rol OC Cu­pid

Trinci­ty, Tacarigua