Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance since as­sum­ing of­fice on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2015, has been eval­u­at­ed as "poor" by one po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst.

In­dera Sage­wan-Al­li said it was now six months post the gen­er­al elec­tion and there was a sense the coun­try is on au­to-pi­lot, float­ing along with­out a sense of di­rec­tion or des­ti­na­tion. To­mor­row, the Gov­ern­ment, led by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, marks its six-month mile­stone in of­fice. Row­ley and his Cab­i­net have been in To­ba­go on a re­treat since last week.

Sage­wan-Al­li said there was great un­cer­tain­ty and fear among the pop­u­la­tion and a feel­ing the Gov­ern­ment has gone un­der­ground, un­able to pro­vide the kind of lead­er­ship and de­ci­sion mak­ing that is need­ed to in­ject a sense of con­fi­dence.

She told the Sun­day Guardian, "The econ­o­my of Trinidad and To­ba­go is in eco­nom­ic de­cline as a con­se­quence of the con­tract­ing en­er­gy sec­tor. "The Gov­ern­ment is help­less to change the cur­rent course as it has no con­trol over in­ter­na­tion­al prices of oil and gas, the re­sponse of multi­na­tion­al oil and gas com­pa­nies and con­se­quent­ly its rev­enue in­flow. "More­over, the PNM has nev­er man­aged the coun­try in hard times and it ap­pears that it is chal­lenged to the task."

In her view, the gov­ern­ment's two re­spons­es to the eco­nom­ic down­turn was to find ways to squeeze more tax­es out of the cit­i­zen­ry and to raise rev­enue through in­creased debt and draw downs from na­tion­al sav­ings. She said even be­fore this re­ces­sion, the mid­dle and low­er in­come earn­ers were al­ready stretched to the lim­it. "Now, the in­creased VAT net, re-in­tro­duc­tion of prop­er­ty tax, threats of in­creased util­i­ty prices, cou­pled with price in­creas­es caused by the de­valu­ing cur­ren­cy, and fear of job loss­es make for a fear­ful cit­i­zen­ry.

"While the Gov­ern­ment might have no choice in these re­gards, the pop­u­la­tion needs to feel that things are be­ing put in place to get the econ­o­my out of the cri­sis," Sage­wan-Al­li said. To date, she said, oth­er than Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­vis­ing the pop­u­la­tion to eat cas­sa­va, there has been si­lence on the way for­ward. She cau­tioned that in­creas­ing the coun­try's debt pro­file while whit­tling away at na­tion­al sav­ings to meet re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture was a recipe for fur­ther eco­nom­ic de­cay.

Bas­deo: Sev­en out of ten, they're still on pro­ba­tion

For po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Maukesh Bas­deo, the gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance was rat­ed sev­en out of ten. He said his rea­son was that it's a six-month pe­ri­od and that it was dif­fi­cult to pro­vide an over­all as­sess­ment. Bas­deo stressed that the Gov­ern­ment was in a pro­ba­tion­ary pe­ri­od. Apart from that, the Gov­ern­ment has been bur­dened with two ma­jor is­sues–crime and the econ­o­my.

He said crime was a ma­jor chal­lenge giv­en gov­ern­ment's pol­i­cy re­gard­ing the Min­istry of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty where the Min­istry of Jus­tice was dis­solved. How­ev­er, the al­lo­ca­tion to the min­istry in the bud­get showed their pri­or­i­ty re­gard­ing crime since it was one of the largest al­lo­ca­tions. "But crime has con­tin­ued to be a chal­lenge, not on­ly for this ad­min­is­tra­tion but the last two ad­min­is­tra­tions. Bas­deo said the last two months have been very dif­fi­cult in the area of crime and the oth­er is­sue was the de­crease in the price of the coun­try's main com­mod­i­ty earn­ers–oil and gas.

Cuffie needs to im­proveartic­u­late­ness

Mean­while, sev­er­al min­is­ters have re­mained out of the spot­light–MP for San Fer­nan­do East Ran­dall Mitchell, who is the min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion has bare­ly been heard of, as well as Fitzger­ald Hinds, Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture; An­cil An­toine, Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties; and Den­nis Moses, Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs. Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Max­ie Cuffie has been des­ig­nat­ed a sin­gle spokesman to com­mu­ni­cate with the pop­u­la­tion. In as­sess­ing Cuffie, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James said he was giv­ing it a go, but was not in­form­ing on many min­istries and de­part­ments.

"And fur­ther, it would be to the ben­e­fit of all if he im­proved his ar­tic­u­late­ness." Asked what the Gov­ern­ment was not do­ing that it should be do­ing, James said it seemed to be do­ing well enough since there was no big pub­lic out­cry, no big demon­stra­tions or no sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic ag­i­ta­tion. "But this won't last for­ev­er. They need to en­gage the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion with some huge in­no­v­a­tive ap­proach and/or some huge project that is de­fen­si­ble in the on­go­ing dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances."He added that all min­is­ters have the po­ten­tial to do bet­ter, but far more in­for­ma­tion was need­ed on what they were do­ing, es­pe­cial­ly min­is­ters whose port­fo­lio has a high vis­i­bil­i­ty, like Hinds, who need­ed some high vis­i­bil­i­ty projects that would ex­cite the pub­lic imag­i­na­tion.

Sage­wan-Al­li's said ap­point­ing Cuffie to speak on be­half of the oth­er min­is­ters "is a far cry from the open and trans­par­ent gov­er­nance promised on the cam­paign trail, es­pe­cial­ly since the min­is­ter is too of­ten un­able to re­spond with the nec­es­sary de­tails to ad­e­quate­ly ex­plain things."

She said while the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion was guilty, cer­tain­ly in the ear­ly days, of hav­ing too many con­flict­ing voic­es, the new Gov­ern­ment has ba­si­cal­ly muz­zled min­is­ters from com­mu­ni­cat­ing with the pub­lic which did not en­gen­der a sense of as­sur­ance that they could lead the coun­try out of the cur­rent cri­sis.

Neo­phytes, OJT's on the job

On whether the Cab­i­net has neo­phytes, James said while there were, there was no ev­i­dence that they were syco­phants. Sage­wan-Al­li felt the Cab­i­net com­prised more neo­phytes than ex­pe­ri­ence. Re­fer­ring to Row­ley's state­ments on the ap­point­ment of for­mer Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor Jwala Ram­bar­ran that "it's not an OJT," she said the same could be said of some of his min­is­te­r­i­al ap­point­ments.

She said, "To ex­plain this as the in­clu­sion of youth in de­ci­sion mak­ing is in­ad­e­quate. "You see, youth with­out ex­pe­ri­ence should not hold po­si­tions of CEOs but be un­der­stud­ies to the CEO so that they can ac­quire the nec­es­sary ex­pe­ri­ence to one day take over. In this in­stance though, it is ev­i­dent that many of these ap­point­ments are for cos­met­ic pur­pose."

PMs will err, they are hu­man

Re­gard­ing in­ap­pro­pri­ate state­ments made by the PM, such as the "par­ents breed­ing mon­sters" and his back-track­ing com­ments on the Ray­mond Tim-Kee mat­ter, James said prime min­is­ters will err at times. He said they were hu­mans even though peo­ple tend­ed to de­ify them. James said, "The trick is for them to keep re­flect­ing, to re­cov­er quick­ly, and to be hon­est and forth­right in cor­rect­ing mis­takes. The pub­lic will see the hon­esty. I thought he re­cov­ered nice­ly in the Tim-Kee mat­ter. "But it is not prime min­is­te­r­i­al to call chil­dren mon­sters, even if, in a fit of high emo­tion one might pri­vate­ly al­low one­self to think they are."

He said chil­dren are the prod­uct of do­mes­tic and so­cial con­di­tions and once they were de­fin­able as chil­dren, it was the du­ty of adult so­ci­ety to re­ha­bil­i­tate them, to take the high ground and do things to make them grow, and to adopt healthy ap­proach­es to­wards them.

"Call­ing them names just won't do. PM Row­ley did not choose his words ju­di­cious­ly and one rea­son could be that he spoke off the cuff, not from a pre­pared speech."

Asked how they dealt with these mat­ters, James said Gov­ern­ment has act­ed "with su­per cau­tious­ness" as in the cas­es of En­er­gy Min­is­ter Nicole Olivierre; "with pro­tec­tive­ness" in the case of Hous­ing Min­is­ter Mar­lene Mac­Don­ald; "with rea­son­able­ness" in crime and "su­per­fi­cial tough­ness" in re­gards to school vi­o­lence.

On the gov­ern­ment's qui­et or con­ser­v­a­tive ap­proach, the op­po­site to the last ad­min­stra­tion's, James said the PNM Gov­ern­ment was not a noisy bunch, "at least, not yet."

He said the more per­sua­sive rea­son may be that the par­lous eco­nom­ic cir­cum­stances were ham­string­ing their abil­i­ty to act de­ci­sive­ly.