Ra­mona Ram­di­al

This month marks the first an­niver­sary of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment’s gen­er­al elec­tion win. The ques­tion is: Did “every­body win?” and is one year enough time to an­swer it? GE2025’s “two to one” vic­to­ry of the UNC’s Coali­tion of In­ter­ests over the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) in Trinidad and their ban­ish­ment from To­ba­go by the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) was a de­fin­i­tive re­jec­tion of a PNM gov­ern­ment af­ter a decade.

What does the elec­torate think about their one-year-old UNC Gov­ern­ment, I won­der? Is the “hon­ey­moon” over? Will this Gov­ern­ment have to spend their en­tire term re­vers­ing the dam­age done by their pre­de­ces­sor? Have all mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment been able to change their “Op­po­si­tion” mind­set to one of “coun­try first” Gov­ern­ment? Will next year’s lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions pro­vide a clear in­di­ca­tion of our cit­i­zen­ry’s ap­pre­ci­a­tion of our Gov­ern­ment’s de­liv­ery?

When the PNM held of­fice from Sep­tem­ber 2015 to April 2025, Trinidad and To­ba­go ex­pe­ri­enced a sig­nif­i­cant de­cline in both crude oil and nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion. They presided over a loss of about a third of the yield dur­ing that decade. Their much-tout­ed “game-chang­ers,” like the clo­sure of Petrotrin and the de­liv­ery of the Drag­on Gas deal, are now be­fore the UNC Gov­ern­ment to turn around. I have al­ready ac­cept­ed blame as the “chief ar­chi­tect” in the demise of their San­dals project, an­oth­er one of their failed “game-chang­ers.”

As such, the pre­vi­ous PNM de­liv­ered no ma­jor projects to progress our na­tion to a bet­ter eco­nom­ic po­si­tion than the one we held at the start of their two con­sec­u­tive terms in of­fice. In fact, that po­si­tion wors­ened. When the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion took of­fice last year, they in­her­it­ed a $4.42 bil­lion deficit for May 2025 alone. When the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment lost to the PNM in 2015, the debt-to-GDP ra­tio was be­low 40 per cent. It more than dou­bled to over 80 per cent by the time the elec­torate had had enough of the PNM.

With such a low bar, this UNC Gov­ern­ment was ex­pect­ed to vault it, quick­ly.

The aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures they im­ple­ment­ed at the on­set drew pub­lic ire. The ear­ly shut­ting down of the Cepep, URP and Re­for­esta­tion and Wa­ter­shed re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion pro­grammes put over 15,000 work­ers on the bread­line in one fell swoop. This cre­at­ed chaos, as the most vul­ner­a­ble and their fam­i­lies were af­fect­ed neg­a­tive­ly by the fall­out. The Na­tion­al Re­cruit­ment Dri­ve would have tar­get­ed these and oth­er un­em­ployed cit­i­zens.

In spite of a promise of over 20,000 pub­lic ser­vice va­can­cies and over­sub­scrip­tion, on­ly 1,801 peo­ple were em­ployed. Even those who gained em­ploy­ment then had to con­tend with the in­tro­duc­tion of a new land­lord tax and in­crease in NIS con­tri­bu­tions. The IMF was a big fan of that mea­sure.

Our na­tion was al­so re­cent­ly re­moved from the EU’s black­list of non-co­op­er­a­tive tax ju­ris­dic­tions. How­ev­er, our S&P in­vest­ment rat­ing fell late last year to BBB-. Even though the Works’ Min­is­ter vis­it­ed the Mid­dle East and Chi­na in search of FDI, there has been no con­fir­ma­tion of sub­stan­tive ben­e­fit yet.

The Gov­ern­ment has been de­liv­er­ing its “ten per cent” wage in­crease promise to unions like the PSA and the NUGFW, who would have been open­ly sup­port­ive of the UNC dur­ing their GE2025 cam­paign while play­ing hard­ball with oth­er unions like the protest­ing TTUTA and the TTR­NA. Key promis­es like re­open­ing the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal and re­duc­ing Su­per gas by one dol­lar were kept. The pass­ing of the “stand-your-ground” leg­is­la­tion was a much-law de­liv­ered from the cam­paign hus­tings but with­out the faster ac­cess to FULs. The call­ing of suc­ces­sive SoEs seem to be hav­ing less of an im­pact over time and the per­cep­tion of safe­ty by the av­er­age cit­i­zen would not have gone up sig­nif­i­cant­ly, if at all.

The Gov­ern­ment’s for­eign pol­i­cy is all about the Trump ad­min­is­tra­tion and noth­ing about Cari­com. Per­haps we can ben­e­fit from this stance, but there is noth­ing tan­gi­ble yet from US in­ter­ests. A re­cent Reuter’s ar­ti­cle sug­gest­ed that Shell was ac­tive­ly pur­su­ing a Drag­on Gas deal with Venezuela, with its pro­cess­ing in Trinidad. In­ter­est­ing­ly, Min­is­ter of En­er­gy, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, has yet to speak on this de­vel­op­ment. Are dis­cus­sions at a sen­si­tive stage or is our Gov­ern­ment out of the deal-mak­ing? The re­open­ing of the Guaracara Re­fin­ery with­in the next two years could be an­oth­er “game-chang­er.” This UNC Gov­ern­ment has a pletho­ra of op­por­tu­ni­ties with­in grasp. We look for­ward to the max­i­mum ben­e­fit for the peo­ple of Trin­ba­go.

The non-de­liv­ery by UNC MPs in their con­stituen­cies has been dis­ap­point­ing though. The last time those con­stituen­cies en­joyed paved roads, box drains, well-main­tained and light­ed recre­ation­al grounds with jog­ging tracks and new pavil­ions was un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment. Hope­ful­ly, these “heart­land” and oth­er needy ar­eas will be ad­dressed this year!

More guid­ance and sup­port is def­i­nite­ly need­ed for the new min­is­ters, sen­a­tors, chair­men and di­rec­tors of state boards. The Gov­ern­ment has been un­nec­es­sar­i­ly em­bar­rassed by cer­tain poor de­ci­sions. The cit­i­zens ex­pect a gov­ern­ment to se­lect its most ex­pe­ri­enced, com­pe­tent and com­mit­ted par­ty mem­bers to de­liv­er the Gov­ern­ment’s man­date. An over re­liance on new and in­ex­pe­ri­enced in­di­vid­u­als has the en­tire Gov­ern­ment on the back foot, since there can be a learn­ing curve of six months to a year at­tached to these po­si­tions. A cab­i­net reshuf­fle is ex­pect­ed soon though. All things con­sid­ered, I rate our Gov­ern­ment’s first year as five out of ten, with ex­pect­ed mo­men­tum build­ing over the next four. Every­body can still win!

Hap­py East­er, T&T!