The po­lit­i­cal leader of the PNM and his heir ap­par­ent have over 60 years of par­lia­men­tary and min­is­te­r­i­al ex­pe­ri­ence be­tween them. The leader of the UNC and its pre­sump­tive heir, 51 years of po­lit­i­cal ex­pe­ri­ence. They have all been in gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion. Both po­lit­i­cal lead­ers de­posed their pre­de­ces­sors and know how to sur­vive in­ternecine po­lit­i­cal strife, in­clud­ing killing off po­ten­tial suc­ces­sors. They are all ex­pe­ri­enced de­baters, know the ropes and where the bones are buried. There­fore, why is this po­lit­i­cal sea­son char­ac­terised by such empti­ness?

All the rea­sons for de­scrib­ing elec­tion sea­sons as “sil­ly” are on dis­play. Dai­ly, cit­i­zens are fed a di­et of wild ac­cu­sa­tions, fan­ci­ful and un­achiev­able promis­es, gen­er­ous serv­ings of rhetoric and race, fear mon­ger­ing, and usu­al claims of agen­das, con­spir­a­cy, threats and en­e­mies, in the press or busi­ness or­gan­i­sa­tions. The opin­ion polls as pub­lished in the Guardian sug­gest that there is a grow­ing body of elec­tors who are in­dif­fer­ent be­tween the ma­jor par­ties, par­tic­u­lar­ly amongst the more youth­ful (20-45) seg­ment. Per­haps that is why the plat­form talk is trend­ing to a new low?

In­cum­ben­cy brings cer­tain in­her­ent pow­er­ful ad­van­tages. First, it al­lows the rul­ing par­ty to de­ter­mine the elec­tion date and with this fore knowl­edge, the ad­van­tage of prepa­ra­tion. Sec­ond, it al­lows the in­cum­bent to sched­ule its “good news pro­gramme,” like the BHP/ NGC gas con­tract and the Ru­by field de­vel­op­ment. Third, the in­cum­bent will arrange the rib­bon cut­ting cer­e­monies for new­ly “com­plet­ed” projects like the Curepe In­ter­change, the Moru­ga agro-pro­cess­ing plant or the Cou­va Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal. All po­lit­i­cal par­ties play this game. Fourth, the in­cum­bent should have a clear un­der­stand­ing of the cur­rent chal­lenges and the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ca­pac­i­ty to ad­dress the is­sues.

It is there­fore sur­pris­ing that the rul­ing par­ty has yet to make a com­pre­hen­sive state­ment of its stew­ard­ship and its plans for the coun­try if it is to be elect­ed for an­oth­er five years. A few tri­al bal­loons have been float­ed by the PNM’s PR ma­chine in the elec­tron­ic me­dia. These have in­clud­ed the claim that the in­cum­bents have sta­bilised the econ­o­my, built the Curepe In­ter­change and sev­er­al hos­pi­tals, ap­point­ed a “per­ma­nent” com­mis­sion­er of po­lice and man­aged the COVID-19 cri­sis.

Ex­cept that the econ­o­my is any­thing but sta­ble. It has de­clined for five con­sec­u­tive years and COVID has made a bad sit­u­a­tion worse. Whilst the “new” com­mis­sion­er is high­ly vis­i­ble and ar­gu­men­ta­tive (with the press, the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter, the Health Min­is­ter etc) vi­o­lent crime has not de­creased and the num­ber of po­lice shoot­ings have in­creased rapid­ly with no fall in gang ac­tiv­i­ty. The health care sys­tem has not im­proved, and the new cas­es are ev­i­dence that COVID-19 has not been con­tained.

COVID-19 has made the in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy mar­kets, on which T&T de­pends, more com­pet­i­tive and volatile. It is the sin­gle biggest eco­nom­ic and so­cial cri­sis that T&T has faced and has fur­ther com­pli­cat­ed the de­vel­op­ment mod­el pur­sued by suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments. Weak or no growth trans­lates in­to in­creased un­em­ploy­ment, ris­ing pub­lic debt and sus­tained pres­sure on the coun­try’s re­serves. The fi­nance min­is­ter has point­ed to the sub­stan­tial fis­cal buffers pro­vid­ed by the coun­try’s ex­ter­nal re­serves and the HSF to aid in the main­te­nance of short-term eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty. But these are on­ly short-term buffers as point­ed out by the IDB in its lat­est Caribbean Quar­ter­ly bul­letin.

In­for­mal plat­form talk must be but­tressed by a firm ap­proach to the busi­ness of lead­ing T&T out of this whirlpool. It re­quires a clear pol­i­cy ar­tic­u­la­tion and iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of pri­or­i­ties to guide the tight bud­get­ing en­vi­ron­ment. It is not enough to say that we need to do more with less. We must al­so iden­ti­fy where those ef­fi­cien­cies will come from and the gov­ern­ing bu­reau­cra­cy must be held ac­count­able for spe­cif­ic, mea­sur­able, time-bound­ed goals. In the ten days left to the elec­tion, the pow­er of in­cum­ben­cy seems not to have worked to the PNM’s ad­van­tage, even though the Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee’s rec­om­men­da­tions have long been pre­sent­ed.

Whilst the PNM ideas re­main un­cod­i­fied, un­pub­lished and un­brand­ed, the UNC’s plans have been de­scribed as “ques­tion­able and im­prob­a­ble.” How is the coun­try to be led out of this im­passe and on what ba­sis can we choose be­tween the two par­ties whose lead­ers con­tin­ue to look at the rear-view mir­ror, pre­oc­cu­pied with who is more cred­i­ble or who thief more?

For the last 20 years, T&T has been at­tempt­ing to en­gage with the elec­tron­ic rev­o­lu­tion, the bedrock of the new glob­alised in­ter­con­nect­ed world. Yet, de­spite all the ef­forts to make tax pay­ments elec­tron­ic, T&T ranks 106th in the world in its ca­pac­i­ty for cit­i­zens to pay its tax­es. Trans­for­ma­tion re­quires a whole of gov­ern­ment ap­proach not a new min­istry.

To ad­vance, T&T must en­hance the ease of do­ing busi­ness, im­prove pub­lic sec­tor gov­er­nance, mo­bilise and en­gage the pri­vate sec­tor, and stream­line gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions and ex­pen­di­tures in a quest for ef­fi­cien­cy. What are the pri­or­i­ties and the re­source gaps? Who are we putting in the crit­i­cal min­istries to de­liv­er and what is their de­liv­ery track record and ex­pe­ri­ence? In­stead, we have a “beau­ty” con­test de­void of “beau­ties”.