DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

One year af­ter a de­ci­sive elec­tion vic­to­ry, Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tors have giv­en the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion a near-per­fect re­port card, pro­ject­ing a nar­ra­tive of tri­umph and “bet­ter days”.

This comes even as in­de­pen­dent voic­es warn that the tran­si­tion from cam­paign rhetoric to the re­al­i­ty of the trea­sury is far from com­plete.

Tourism and In­vest­ment Min­is­ter Satyaka­ma Ma­haraj, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Hous­ing Phillip Ed­ward Alexan­der and Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport David Nakhid, all rat­ed the Gov­ern­ment’s first 365 days with scores that leave al­most no room for cri­tique.

Ma­haraj of­fered an em­phat­ic en­dorse­ment of the term thus far, stat­ing: “We’re do­ing a fan­tas­tic job, you know. I’ll give, cer­tain­ly a 9 out of 10. 10 out of 10. We’re do­ing good—re­al­ly, re­al­ly good.”

This sen­ti­ment was echoed by Alexan­der, who pro­vid­ed a near­ly per­fect score while ac­knowl­edg­ing per­son­al ac­count­abil­i­ty for the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s mi­nor set­backs.

“I would give us a strong 9.8 out of 10. There’s al­ways room for im­prove­ment and I, my­self, would have made some mis­takes. I think I might be re­spon­si­ble for one of the .2 points,” Alexan­der said.

Mean­while, Nakhid framed the Gov­ern­ment’s first 12 months as a nec­es­sary pe­ri­od of struc­tur­al re­pair, cit­ing the con­di­tion of the State’s in­sti­tu­tions up­on their ar­rival.

“I will rate the Gov­ern­ment 10 out of 10, giv­en what the PNM left us, giv­en the sham­bles we met the trea­sury, the ed­u­ca­tion sec­tor, the sport­ing sec­tor,” Nakhid said. “This was ten years of waste, of cor­rup­tion and we have to fix it and we will fix it slow­ly. We ask the peo­ple for pa­tience and let them know that bet­ter days are com­ing.”

How­ev­er, this in­ter­nal con­fi­dence is met with a more mea­sured as­sess­ment from the In­de­pen­dent bench.

Dr Mar­lene Attzs, an econ­o­mist and In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor, sug­gest­ed that the ad­min­is­tra­tion is still nav­i­gat­ing the dif­fi­cult rec­on­cil­i­a­tion be­tween po­lit­i­cal promis­es and fis­cal re­al­i­ty.

While con­grat­u­lat­ing the Gov­ern­ment on reach­ing the one-year mile­stone, Dr Attzs not­ed that the process of align­ing cam­paign-trail ex­pec­ta­tions with the ac­tu­al state of the coun­try’s fi­nances is far from com­plete.

“I think we’ve seen some of that over the last year in terms of the Gov­ern­ment try­ing to rec­on­cile some of the things that they spoke about on the cam­paign trail with what they ac­tu­al­ly found when they as­sumed lead­er­ship of the coun­try,” Dr Attzs said. “And we’re still go­ing through that process. It’s still a year. There have been some chal­lenges. We’re look­ing for­ward to the mid-year re­view, for ex­am­ple, to find out what has been hap­pen­ing in terms of the coun­try’s fi­nan­cial health.”

De­spite the high marks is­sued by Gov­ern­ment Sen­a­tors, a de­fin­i­tive date for the pre­sen­ta­tion of the mid-year bud­get re­view, the crit­i­cal mech­a­nism for as­sess­ing the na­tion’s fis­cal tra­jec­to­ry, has yet to be con­firmed.