Yvonne Ba­boolal

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to re­ceive mixed re­sults on their per­for­mance so far, one day ahead of the sec­ond year an­niver­sary of their com­ing to pow­er in May 24, 2010 Gen­er­al Elec­tions. The re­spons­es came from non-gov­ern­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions (NGOs) and in­ter­est groups rep­re­sent­ing civ­il so­ci­ety, labour and busi­ness.

The PP coali­tion de­feat­ed the in­cum­bent PNM 29-12 and cel­e­brates to­mor­row with a mass ral­ly at Mid Cen­tre Mall in Ch­agua­nas. Di­ana Ma­habir-Wy­att of the T&T Coali­tion Against Do­mes­tic Vi­o­lence said, "You are talk­ing two years. Two years is a very short pe­ri­od of time. It's not pos­si­ble to change the coun­try in two years."

She ob­served, though, that since the PP came in­to gov­er­nance, there has been an in­crease in the free ex­pres­sion of po­lit­i­cal views to an ex­tent nev­er seen be­fore. "Peo­ple are do­ing this as though they don't feel they will be vic­timised. It shows a progress of thought in terms of cul­ture. We are look­ing for the be­gin­ning of change. And that we are be­gin­ning to see. But I re­alise this is go­ing to take a long time."

She be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment is work­ing to­wards ful­fill­ing its goals and point­ed out that all po­lit­i­cal par­ties, from the Caribbean to the UK to the US, make promis­es on the cam­paign trail they can­not keep. "Some to­tal­ly un­re­al­is­tic promis­es are be­ing made in the on­go­ing US pres­i­den­tial elec­tion cam­paign, for in­stance," she not­ed. Lo­cal­ly, cit­i­zens are still wait­ing, too.

"Af­ter two years, we are still wait­ing on the Scar­bor­ough hos­pi­tal, the on­col­o­gy cen­tre and the ful­fil­ment of a lot of oth­er promis­es to im­prove the health sec­tor. "But it takes time." From an NGO point of view, she said there is a pro­fessed at­tempt to con­sult more with civ­il so­ci­ety. But she is not con­vinced that the re­sults of that con­sul­ta­tion led to any change in pol­i­cy.

Fix­in' T&T, an ac­tivist group, felt it was not about grad­ing the Gov­ern­ment right now. "Crit­i­cal to good gov­er­nance is good cit­i­zen­ry," ex­ec­u­tive mem­ber Pe­ter George Jr, said in re­sponse to the ques­tion of the Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance, thus far.

"It's too ear­ly to be grad­ing. As far as as­sess­ing the Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance, we would rather wait. Let the two years pass," he said.

Fix­in' T&T is more fo­cused on build­ing and en­abling cit­i­zen­ry, he added. "Clear­ly, it's the thing we need to do as cit­i­zens to em­pow­er our Gov­ern­ment. If we don't de­mand ac­count­abil­i­ty from the Gov­ern­ment, we can't com­plain. That's what we are fight­ing for."

Head of the T&T Chap­ter of the Caribbean As­so­ci­a­tion for Fem­i­nist Re­search and Ac­tion, Tara Ra­moutar, be­lieves the Gov­ern­ment has per­formed. Ra­moutar com­mends the Gov­ern­ment for rais­ing the aware­ness of the pop­u­la­tion about their rights and how they can be ac­cessed.

"From May 24 to now, peo­ple are more con­scious," she said. "The Gov­ern­ment has done a lot, is do­ing a lot and try­ing to do a lot." But she is still wait­ing to see that new style of gov­er­nance the PP promised un­fold. "Is the Gov­ern­ment ad­her­ing to pro­to­cols, con­fi­den­tial­i­ty? They don't have to fol­low every­thing the last regime had on the draw­ing board," Ra­moutar said.

Abrahim Ali of the San Juan Busi­ness As­so­ci­a­tion felt the Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance was lack­ing in a lot of re­spects, es­pe­cial­ly from an eco­nom­ic point of view. "Their whole eco­nom­ic plan needs to be re­vised. They are look­ing for for­eign in­vestors but the in­dus­tri­al cli­mate here is very bad. They need to set­tle this first," Ali said.

Joint Trade Union Move­ment rep­re­sen­ta­tive Vin­cent Cabr­era had a ready an­swer. "There has sim­ply been a change of of­fice-hold­ers. The PP has not changed the neo-lib­er­al sys­tem, and has failed to car­ry out fun­da­men­tal changes in the so­cial and eco­nom­ic sys­tems of the coun­try," the union leader said.