It has be­come the norm for the par­ty elect­ed to form the gov­ern­ment to adopt its po­lit­i­cal man­i­festo as the coun­try’s of­fi­cial pol­i­cy frame­work. The prob­lem is that par­ty man­i­festos are broad state­ments of in­tent with few clear ob­jec­tives. They may give some idea of the di­rec­tion the par­ty wants to take, but man­i­festos are of­ten glossy PR doc­u­ments, on­ly loose­ly ground­ed in da­ta. The dev­il is in the de­tails, and gov­ern­ment re­quires de­tail and co­or­di­na­tion.

The key task of the gov­ern­ment is to set pri­or­i­ties and de­vel­op an ac­tion plan to co­or­di­nate and ex­e­cute pol­i­cy. The hard part is hav­ing the dis­ci­pline to stick to pri­or­i­ties and ful­fil im­por­tant promis­es, rather than re­act­ing to the ur­gent. Pri­or­i­ties in op­po­si­tion of­ten dif­fer in of­fice, as meet­ing elec­toral promis­es can con­flict with the de­mands of gov­ern­ing.

Po­lit­i­cal promis­es are paid for by tax­pay­ers. Mr Tan­coo’s ex­pan­sive “promis­es made, promis­es kept” re­frain in the bud­get speech con­trasts with the grow­ing dif­fi­cul­ty of ad­dress­ing the 10% wage in­crease for 2014-2019. The ba­sic is­sue of cash or non-cash pay­ment has not yet been set­tled. What will be the po­si­tion re­gard­ing the 2020-25 pe­ri­od and be­yond? How will these ne­go­ti­a­tions im­pact the fis­cal po­si­tion?

The two key pri­or­i­ties are na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and a re­turn to sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth. Safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty are ev­i­denced by a long-term re­duc­tion in crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly mur­ders. Re­turn­ing the coun­try to pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic growth re­quires sec­tors oth­er than the en­er­gy sec­tor to thrive and grow. The “Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion plan” needs more than for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment. It al­so needs lo­cal skill sets com­ple­ment­ed by lo­cal in­puts to en­sure the ini­tia­tive thrives and takes root. Per­haps it is too ear­ly to tell, but there is lit­tle ev­i­dence to sug­gest that the seeds have be­gun to ger­mi­nate.

Safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty is­sues have been in­creas­ing, trou­bling gov­ern­ments over the last 25 years. Po­lit­i­cal par­ties have main­ly used a “state of emer­gency” as a tool to re­dress the sit­u­a­tion when the pub­lic de­mands ac­tion. Trinidad and To­ba­go saw four na­tion­al emer­gen­cies from 2010 to ear­ly 2026: two for crime (2011; 2024–25), one for COVID-19, and one in mid-2025 due to se­cu­ri­ty threats.

Dur­ing each state of emer­gency and the pe­ri­od im­me­di­ate­ly fol­low­ing, crime rates de­clined. How­ev­er, no state of emer­gency has man­aged to achieve a per­ma­nent re­duc­tion in the mur­der rate or an over­all de­cline in the rate of crime. Nei­ther has there been any per­ma­nent de­cline in gangs or gang-re­lat­ed ac­tiv­i­ty, nor has any de­tainee been con­vict­ed. Whilst not di­rect­ly rel­e­vant, it is im­por­tant to note that de­spite ex­ten­sive an­ti-mon­ey laun­der­ing pro­vi­sions, vo­lu­mi­nous sus­pi­cious ac­tiv­i­ty re­ports and in­va­sive and ex­ten­sive com­pli­ance regimes, no one has been con­vict­ed of mon­ey laun­der­ing.

Whilst it is im­pos­si­ble to erad­i­cate crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty, the mur­der rate and as­so­ci­at­ed crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty must be mean­ing­ful­ly ad­dressed. It does not mat­ter if a large cache of drugs is “found” be­cause of “in­tel­li­gence”, or weapons and am­mu­ni­tion seized, if the traf­fick­ers are not iden­ti­fied, ar­rest­ed and con­vict­ed. Those “suc­cess­es” are emp­ty pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cis­es as the un­ap­pre­hend­ed per­pe­tra­tors are free to car­ry on.

Fix­ing law en­force­ment mech­a­nisms re­quires painstak­ing work. This was not con­sid­ered in the Law Re­form (Zones of Spe­cial Op­er­a­tions) (Spe­cial Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ty De­vel­op­ment) Bill, 2026.

What are the next steps?