On Mon­day, as he wound up de­bate on the For­eign Ac­counts Tax Com­pli­ance Act (FAT­CA), Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert ex­pressed frus­tra­tion with the Op­po­si­tion and de­clared: "I am ashamed to be a Par­lia­men­tar­i­an."

His frus­tra­tion fol­lowed five failed at­tempts to get the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) to par­tic­i­pate in de­bate on leg­is­la­tion which the min­is­ter said is not just about the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty but about the av­er­age cit­i­zen.

"Fail­ure to pass this law will af­fect all 1.3 mil­lion souls in T&T, es­pe­cial­ly the lit­tle peo­ple! We'll be in a sit­u­a­tion where we in T&T won't be able to do any trans­ac­tions with the out­side world," the min­is­ter said.

If those warn­ings didn't raise alarm bells for those sit­ting in the wings as the al­ter­nate gov­ern­ment, what will?

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ar­gu­ment that FAT­CA is not as im­por­tant as crime is not jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for the UNC not par­tic­i­pat­ing in the de­bate.

It might be use­ful at this point to re­mind the Op­po­si­tion, as well as all oth­er elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives, that they are in Par­lia­ment be­cause of the hun­dreds of thou­sands of peo­ple who vot­ed for them. They sit in those cham­bers to rep­re­sent cit­i­zens from all walks of life–house­wives, farm­ers, busi­ness lead­ers and a lot of or­di­nary peo­ple who are well aware of the con­se­quences if FAT­CA leg­is­la­tion is not passed.

Im­bert, an­tic­i­pat­ing the lack of Op­po­si­tion sup­port, has asked the Unit­ed States for yet an­oth­er ex­ten­sion on the dead­line for com­pli­ance to Sep­tem­ber 2017.

It is not yet known whether that re­quest will be grant­ed, so there con­tin­ues to be anx­i­ety and un­cer­tain­ty over the mat­ter, par­tic­u­lar­ly as the leg­is­la­tion re­quires a two-thirds ma­jor­i­ty for pas­sage. That means it must be sup­port­ed by at least three Op­po­si­tion Mem­bers of Par­lia­ment to be passed.

The Op­po­si­tion owes it to the peo­ple who elect­ed them to pro­tect their in­ter­ests and they can do that most suc­cess­ful­ly by par­tic­i­pat­ing in the FAT­CA de­bate and putting on record their con­cerns about the leg­is­la­tion. In any case, their strat­e­gy of boy­cotting the de­bate is not work­ing, if com­ments and so­cial me­dia post­ings are any­thing to go by, as the ma­jor­i­ty don't un­der­stand the point the UNC is try­ing to make. In­stead, the wide­ly held per­cep­tion is that the Op­po­si­tion is hold­ing the Gov­ern­ment to ran­som.

The coun­try now waits to see the UNC's next move as Gov­ern­ment has re­moved claus­es in the leg­is­la­tion to which they ob­ject­ed.

Hope­ful­ly, the fast ap­proach­ing new year will bring with it a new ap­proach by politi­cians on both sides who must share blame for the cur­rent FAT­CA leg­isla­tive dilem­ma fac­ing the coun­try.

It is bad enough that the crim­i­nal el­e­ment, which con­sti­tutes a small mi­nor­i­ty of the pop­u­la­tion, seems hell bent on de­stroy­ing the coun­try.

It can't be too much to ask that politi­cians on both sides of the Par­lia­ment cham­ber show them­selves to be ca­pa­ble and will­ing to de­fend the in­ter­ests of cit­i­zens by work­ing hard to de­vel­op laws, pro­grammes and poli­cies that fur­ther T&T's de­vel­op­ment and put the na­tion on a path to pros­per­i­ty.

In­stead of try­ing to score points on po­lit­i­cal ri­vals, what cit­i­zens need from their elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives is that they co-op­er­ate on crit­i­cal is­sues with the aim of sav­ing T&T from fur­ther eco­nom­ic and so­cial de­cline.

There is a grow­ing sense of hope­less­ness across the land, so it is im­per­a­tive that those elect­ed to fix T&T's prob­lems do just that.

It is FAT­CA to­day. Can the coun­try ex­pect an­oth­er pro­tract­ed po­lit­i­cal im­passe the next time there is a bill be­fore Par­lia­ment that re­quires a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty?

Enough with the dra­mat­ic walk outs, boy­cotts, cross talk and par­lia­men­tary time wast­ing. Time to get down to the busi­ness of do­ing what is right for T&T.

The Op­po­si­tion owes it to the peo­ple who elect­ed them to pro­tect their in­ter­ests and they can do that most suc­cess­ful­ly by par­tic­i­pat­ing in the FAT­CA de­bate and putting on record their con­cerns about the leg­is­la­tion. In any case, their strat­e­gy of boy­cotting the de­bate is not work­ing, if com­ments and so­cial me­dia post­ings are any­thing to go by, as the ma­jor­i­ty don't un­der­stand the point the UNC is try­ing to make.