Raphael John-Lall

raphael.lall@guardian.co.tt

Di­rec­tor of the St Au­gus­tine Cen­tre for In­no­va­tion and En­tre­pre­neur­ship Pro­fes­sor John Agard said T&T needs to change its gov­er­nance mod­el to solve press­ing prob­lems like pover­ty and oth­er so­cial ills.

“We have to change the gov­er­nance mod­el of hav­ing a gov­ern­ment and an op­po­si­tion. I can’t say this in any po­lite way be­cause they on­ly crit­i­cise each oth­er and have dif­fi­cul­ty act­ing in the best in­ter­est of the peo­ple.

“I know that oth­ers sug­gest­ed chang­ing the mod­el where even Lloyd Best had pro­posed pro­por­tion­al rep­re­sen­ta­tion but that’s not go­ing to hap­pen in Trinidad and To­ba­go as that re­quires a con­sti­tu­tion­al change,” he said.

Agard, who was con­tribut­ing to an on­line fo­rum on T&T’s struc­tur­al re­forms host­ed by the Trade and Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Unit of the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI), St Au­gus­tine, added that the British mod­el the coun­try in­her­it­ed dur­ing colo­nial times has not worked.

“In Par­lia­ment, there is a bench on one side which has the Gov­ern­ment and on the oth­er side, there is a bench of oth­er peo­ple as well.

“The Red House was de­signed on the British mod­el and es­sen­tial­ly be­tween one bench and the oth­er bench they are two sword lengths apart. They were de­lib­er­ate­ly de­signed on the British mod­el. This is id­i­ot­ic.

“The sto­ry of be­hav­iour change aris­es out of our cul­ture that arose out of slav­ery and in­den­ture­ship. When there was a mas­sa. Mas­sa told peo­ple not to do think­ing, just fol­low in­struc­tions.

“The sur­prise is when your own peo­ple re­place mas­sa, they are do­ing the same thing, just fol­low­ing in­struc­tions. That is part of the cul­ture change that is re­quired in T&T. It seems that noth­ing was learned from the colo­nial pe­ri­od,” Agard said.

He ex­pressed con­cern about the un­der­ly­ing racial di­vide which few want to ad­mit ex­ists in the coun­try and urged the Gov­ern­ment to adopt prac­tices that would see T&T re­duc­ing its car­bon foot­print.

“The Prime Min­is­ter stat­ed at the COP 26 UN Cli­mate Change Con­fer­ence that oil and gas will not go away any­time soon.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go will be de­pen­dent on oil and gas for a long time but it has to come up with a plan about car­bon diox­ide ze­ro emis­sions,” Agard said.

“In the same way that the oil and gas com­pa­nies in Trinidad and To­ba­go have stat­ed that they’re mov­ing away from oil and gas, it’s en­er­gy that they sell. They see where the world is head­ing and where cli­mate change is a ma­jor is­sue.

“They will pro­duce the en­er­gy from re­new­able en­er­gy with mills, so­lar pan­els and so forth. They have dates to ex­it from the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor. Trinidad and To­ba­go needs to do the same.”

Com­ment­ing on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley state­ment that T&T has the largest re­new­able en­er­gy project in the Caribbean which should pro­duce about 10 per cent of the coun­try’s en­er­gy needs in the fu­ture, Agard said: “Trinidad and To­ba­go needs to come up with a roadmap plan of when they will reach ze­ro car­bon diox­ide emis­sions. Whether it is 2050 or 2070 they have to do it in an or­gan­ised man­ner.”