Gail Alexan­der

It wasn't be­cause Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley failed to wear a bal­isi­er tie to de­liv­er his 2012 bud­get re­ply that he en­coun­tered prob­lems to be heard yes­ter­day. Look­ing spiffy in a plain red tie, Row­ley held no grudges for Par­lia­ment staff when the new Wa­ter­front Par­lia­ment's mi­cro­phones failed him. But PP MPs-par­tic­u­lar­ly MP Anil Roberts-had a field day teas­ing Row­ley "We muz­zling the Op­po­si­tion... we fraid them" was among the pi­cong Roberts tossed at Row­ley. The Op­po­si­tion's lack of en­thu­si­asm for Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an's $54 bil­lion bud­get had al­ready earned the PNM side two warn­ings from House Speak­er Wade Mark dur­ing Dook­er­an's de­liv­ery on Mon­day.

Yes­ter­day, it was the Gov­ern­ment's turn to try to rat­tle Row­ley's bud­get re­ply with neg­a­tive com­men­tary-but the Par­lia­ment's tech­ni­cal glitch­es got to him first. Still, Dook­er­an's lack­lus­tre 2012 pro­duc­tion, clear­ly ham­strung by eco­nom­ic con­straints, has pro­vid­ed enough am­mu­ni­tion for Op­po­si­tion re­ply re­gard­ing what could re­sult from the bud­get-and on oth­er is­sues oc­cur­ring with­in Gov­ern­ment. In­deed, PP's Jack Warn­er looked none the worse for wear yes­ter­day af­ter his boss, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, sent the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al the re­cent­ly-re­vealed taped con­ver­sa­tion of Warn­er on al­leged bribery con­cern­ing FI­FA is­sues.

Al­though the Op­po­si­tion PNM and the Part­ner­ship's COP mem­ber called for ac­tion on the mat­ter the same day Per­sad-Bisses­sar act­ed, her move came with­out prompt­ing. Un­sur­pris­ing, con­sid­er­ing the is­sue and pos­si­ble im­pact on her Gov­ern­ment's im­age and cred­i­bil­i­ty. De­spite a slashed port­fo­lio, UNC chair­man Warn­er con­tin­ues com­mand­ing a front row seat along­side Per­sad-Bisses­sar in the new Par­lia­ment cham­ber. How the re­fer­ral of the tape to the AG will im­pact on his fu­ture Gov­ern­ment stand­ing re­mains to be seen. In­ter­est­ing­ly, Warn­er, usu­al­ly Gov­ern­ment's main de­fence af­ter Op­po­si­tion at­tacks in spe­cial de­bates, was not the one de­fend­ing Gov­ern­ment af­ter Row­ley's at­tack on the bud­get yes­ter­day.

It was For­eign Af­fairs/In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan. Fur­ther, in the glob­al en­vi­ron­ment where scep­ti­cism has arisen about fi­nan­cial in­sti­tu­tions fol­low­ing the US and Eu­ro crises, Dook­er­an no­tice­ably dis­tanced him­self from the bud­get pro­pos­al for es­tab­lish­ment of a Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture Bank which he said was Warn­er's idea. Yes­ter­day Row­ley, sar­cas­ti­cal­ly, made much of the "Bank for Jack...take that in your pw­ef­fen (sic), Fi­fa." A cop-out bud­get? Dook­er­an's gen­er­al-bor­der­ing on vague-pro­ject­ed overview of plans for 2012 left as many ques­tions on var­i­ous ar­eas as it lacked start-up dates for cer­tain projects.

Dook­er­an had been head­ing to the $50 bil­lion di­rec­tion since ear­ly this year when he boast­ed of "blue skies" in the econ­o­my, hint­ing that bud­gets over $50 bil­lion lay ahead. De­spite sub­se­quent glob­al crises, Dook­er­an has pressed on with his three-year growth plan with an ex­pand­ed bud­getary pack­age from the 2011 fig­ure of $49 bil­lion to 2012's $54 bil­lion-in­clud­ing in­creased ex­pen­di­ture. From yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, the Op­po­si­tion be­gan what is ex­pect­ed to be clin­i­cal analy­ses to fer­ret out the de­tails and an­swers from Gov­ern­ment need­ed for the true 2012 pic­ture.

In­deed, Row­ley, start­ing his re­ply yes­ter­day, said he would show the re­al cir­cum­stances which Dook­er­an "evad­ed." It would hard­ly have strength­ened bud­get (or Gov­ern­ment's) cred­i­bil­i­ty that two days af­ter Dook­er­an spoke, one of his state­ments was dis­put­ed by fel­low PP mem­ber, Sen­a­tor David Ab­du­lah, who said Dook­er­an had got­ten the gen­e­sis of the Eu­ro-cri­sis "quite wrong." (The im­pli­ca­tion was Dook­er­an may al­so have got­ten his long-range pre­dic­tion on this in the bud­get wrong.) The stage was set for Dook­er­an's pre­sen­ta­tion since last Sat­ur­day when the Prime Min­is­ter stressed to T&T the grim re­al­i­ty of in­ter­na­tion­al cir­cum­stances and lo­cal eco­nom­ic stand­ing.

This year's bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion was de­liv­ered in a no­tice­able dif­fer­ent cli­mate-apart from the new Par­lia­ment cham­ber-where the Gov­ern­ment was con­cerned. For the 2011 bud­get de­liv­ery last Sep­tem­ber, four months af­ter the PP's elec­tion vic­to­ry, spir­its on the Gov­ern­ment bench had been high for Dook­er­an's first bud­get, with much ac­com­pa­ny­ing vo­cal sup­port from PP MPs. On Mon­day, Dook­er­an's sec­ond bud­get, de­liv­ered amid a more sub­dued Gov­ern­ment side, bore no­tice­able signs of the group ef­fort he con­firmed was in­volved in the is­sue. There was less of Dook­er­an's ef­fu­sive lan­guage and more of a plain pow­er-point pre­sen­ta­tion ap­proach as he jumped from note to note.

How­ev­er how much full Part­ner­ship in­put was ac­tu­al­ly in­volved is ques­tion­able fol­low­ing PP Sen­a­tor Ab­du­lah's sub­se­quent pro­nounce­ment. Dook­er­an was not long-wind­ed on re­port­ing of 2011 eco­nom­ic per­for­mance or achieve­ments. But con­sid­er­ing the one per cent con­trac­tion in the econ­o­my which he con­ced­ed, some ex­pla­na­tion-be­yond the glob­al sce­nario-would have been nec­es­sary. If there was no elab­o­ra­tion on that area of fail­ure, it is an area which the Op­po­si­tion will (ob­vi­ous­ly) be re­mark­ing at length on in de­bate. Dook­er­an's ad­dress moved from ty­ing up loose ends on ma­jor out­stand­ing is­sues from yet an­oth­er Cli­co ini­tia­tive and nam­ing the bud­get's biggest tick­et-for na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty-to the heart of his pack­age, an in­vest­ment plat­form for eco­nom­ic growth.

Al­lowances for se­cu­ri­ty forces ob­vi­ous­ly re­sult­ed from their state of emer­gency (SoE) per­for­mance and Gov­ern­ment's con­tin­ued need for height­ened se­cu­ri­ty plans in T&T, post-SoE. On the sur­face Dook­er­an's bud­get ap­peared lack­lus­tre to the point of be­ing in­nocu­ous. How­ev­er, sus­pi­cions have arisen about his oil price of US$75 per bar­rel, a high price to peg the bud­get on when glob­al sit­u­a­tions are at low ebb. His 2012 pre­scrip­tion based on greater ex­pen­di­ture and less rev­enue al­so fu­els fur­ther spec­u­la­tion about source of fund­ing-es­pe­cial­ly since he (proud­ly) de­clared there are no new tax­es and rev­enue streams he out­lined were in a min­i­mum.

Con­se­quent­ly, Op­po­si­tion fi­nance ex­perts are con­cerned about an in­flat­ed oil price and whether Gov­ern­ment may be set­ting the stage to- wards a "back door" to ac­cess IMF fund­ing if the oil price drops be­low US$75. In­deed, Gov­ern­ment passed three bills to in­crease bor­row­ings in Par­lia­ment a month be­fore the bud­get. How­ev­er, the im­age-con­scious PP would sharply recog­nise the im­pact of seek­ing IMF as­sis­tance on its po­lit­i­cal stocks and man­age­ment im­age when T&T alone in the re­gion has so far staved off IMF help. Un­heed­ing of Cen­tral Bank ad­vice against con­tin­u­ing deficit bud­gets, this year's pack­age has a $7.6 bil­lion deficit-neg­li­gi­ble dip-be­neath last year's $7.7 bil­lion.

While "give­ways" were lim­it­ed by eco­nom­ic con­straints to the ab­solute min­i­mum-ab­ject poor and dif­fer­ent­ly abled-Dook­er­an's ac­tu­al bud­get theme was prob­a­bly con­tained in what he said at the 3.45 pm mark of Mon­day's ad­dress: "...What we may have said last year, we're do­ing this year...". That cat­e­go­ry in­clud­ed in­cen­tives the busi­ness sec­tor has been clam­our­ing for, in­clud­ing pub­lic/pri­vate sec­tor part­ner­ing. Ma­jor plans un­der con­sid­er­a­tion- In­vaders Bay de­vel­op­ment and the Caribbean fast fer­ry-al­so in­volve the pri­vate sec­tor.

Gov­ern­ment may be con­strained due to the com­pli­ca­tions in­volved in the for­mer. But the fer­ry project was pro­posed at Ju­ly's Cari­com sum­mit to con­sol­i­date Gov­ern­ment's im­age af­ter calls for T&T to play a big­ger role in as­sist­ing Cari­com. There­fore Gov­ern­ment may be con­strained to re­port progress by Cari­com's next Ju­ly sum­mit. With all of this and af­ter re­cent­ly em­bark­ing on the pri­vate sec­tor's oth­er ma­jor con­cern-start­ing to clean up crime-Gov­ern­ment, in cre­at­ing the re­quest­ed con­di­tions, has punt­ed the eco­nom­ic ball square­ly in­to the busi­ness sec­tor's court to kick­start in 2012.

The height­ened piv­otal role the busi­ness sec­tor is ex­pect­ed to play in set­ting T&T's di­rec­tion back to eco­nom­ic rights in 2012 was re­in­forced by Plan­ning Min­is­ter Bhoe Tewarie and for­mer PP Sen­a­tor Patrick Wat­son-Dook­er­an's as­so­ciate-ad­dress­ing the TTMA on Wednes­day. Tewarie how­ev­er has ad­mit­ted there are le­git­i­mate con­cerns on as­pects of what can be achieved by the bud­get. Dook­er­an's un­der­ly­ing bud­get theme of pro­tect­ing cit­i­zens will be test­ed by its ced­ing of a cer­tain mea­sure of re­spon­si­bil­i­ty re­gard­ing the econ­o­my to the busi­ness sec­tor. In­deed, Dook­er­an's shift of the bur­den of chal­lenge to the pri­vate sec­tor in such dicey eco­nom­ic times may be viewed as a cop-out.

Whether the busi­ness sec­tor's da­ta is strong enough for the con­fi­dence to put its mon­ey where its mouth was pri­or to bud­get 2012's con­ces­sions is one thing. The oth­er is whether the mar­ket and pub­lic faith in such a glob­al­ly neg­a­tive cli­mate will pro­vide the rest of what is nec­es­sary to make the en­vi­sioned for­mu­la work. Af­ter the Cli­co de­ba­cle, lo­cal con­sumers are well with­in their right to think twice to buy or in­vest in a mar­ket­place where shod­dy goods and sim­i­lar ser­vices have be­come en­trenched. (And where it will take more than Dook­er­an's ap­peals for ser­vice sec­tor im­prove­ment to ful­fil this.)

Al­so, some bud­getary mea­sures con­cern­ing rev­enue flow main­ly tar­get busi­ness as­pects, in­clud­ing in the en­er­gy sec­tor. It there­fore re­mains to be seen if what has been done in the past by many busi­ness­es will ap­ply again and whether Joe Pub­lic-who has not been di­rect­ly pe­nalised by Dook­er­an's pack­age-might ex­pe­ri­ence trick­le-down im­pact. "Go gro­cery next month and you would re­al­ly see how the bud­get movin'," said a 52-year-old Cou­va taxi dri­ver on Wednes­day. With To­ba­go suf­fer­ing re­ces­sion­ary and SoE fall-out, its $2.9 bil­lion al­lo­ca­tion is $1 bil­lion over last year's. But Dook­er­an's warn­ing that monies be used for re­quest­ed pur­pos­es was ob­vi­ous­ly with 2013 THA elec­tions in mind.

Dook­er­an's bud­get con­cern­ing one im­pov­er­ished area-East Port-of-Spain-ear­marked it for tourism. But his state­ment about bev­er­age con­tain­er re­cy­cling held no word about the scrap iron re­cy­cling in­dus­try which East PoS-Beetham, Sea Lots-deal­ers have lit­er­al­ly begged for. As bud­get de­tails emerge, it re­mains to be seen if the PP will once again be ac­cused of dis­crim­i­na­tion in the Op­po­si­tion area.

PNM MPs can't be seen

Not on­ly did PNM's Row­ley suf­fer "tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties" in de­liv­er­ing his re­ply yes­ter­day, this led to his ad­dress be­ing fur­ther trun­cat­ed by the lunch break since the Gov­ern­ment was sched­uled to have lunch at the Break­fast Shed near­by.

Yes­ter­day ex-PNM?leader Patrick Man­ning gave Row­ley full at­ten­tion dur­ing Row­ley's re­ply. Man­ning was the first to lend desk-pound­ing sup­port when Row­ley claimed Gov­ern­ment may use the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund for ex­pen­di­ture. If the PP didn't get rid of Man­ning en­tire­ly on May 24, 2010, he's fur­ther out of the pic­ture in the new Par­lia­ment lo­ca­tion-that is, out of the TV screen pic­ture since his last seat on the PNM row is out of cam­era range. Oth­er PN­Mites-lead by chief whip Mar­lene Mc­Don­ald-were so loud in back-up sup­port that House Speak­er Mark had to ap­peal for qui­et.

In the small­er space of the new Par­lia­ment cham­ber, pi­cong and grum­bling are much am­pli­fied around the low-ceilinged room. De­spite yes­ter­day's Op­po­si­tion com­mand of the start of bud­get de­bate, sev­er­al PNM MPs have ex­pressed con­cerns about the new Par­lia­ment. In­deed, the sur­round­ings ap­peared to have on­ly sunk in af­ter Mon­day's first sit­ting. Yes­ter­day as PP's Dook­er­an en­tered, he told col­league Tim Gopeesingh, "You know I didn't have time to look at this place."

Chief com­plaint con­cern­ing the cham­ber came from the PNM, echoed by MP Amery Browne who not­ed the pub­lic gallery is be­hind the Op­po­si­tion. When PN­Mites stand to speak, lis­ten­ers are be­hind their back, he not­ed. Al­so for the first time, when the Par­lia­ment Chan­nel cam­era is on Op­po­si­tion MPs, mem­bers of the pub­lic in the gallery be­hind the Op­po­si­tion row can be seen in the back­ground. Chief whip Mc­Don­ald has al­so ex­pressed con­cern about the "cu­bi­cle" of­fice al­lo­cat­ed to her among the of­fices for the Op­po­si­tion, when tour­ing the fa­cil­i­ties last Sat­ur­day.