“We are de­ter­mined to ex­pand our ca­pac­i­ty to serve and to cap­i­talise on the so­cioe­co­nom­ic ad­vance­ments that lie ahead, en­sur­ing that when re-elect­ed, we will car­ry for­ward the mo­men­tum of progress in Trinidad and To­ba­go.” (Bud­get State­ment 2025 Stead­fast and Res­olute: Forg­ing Path­ways to Pros­per­i­ty, p 176).

This ex­tract from the bud­get state­ment read in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives last Mon­day con­firms that this was a bud­get look­ing to­wards the next gen­er­al elec­tion. Min­is­ter Im­bert spent sub­stan­tial amounts of time de­tail­ing at length the per­for­mance of the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion over the last nine years.

Em­bed­ded in his state­ment was a sig­nif­i­cant eye on the fu­ture of PNM lead­er­ship and pos­si­ble suc­ces­sion plan­ning that is re­port­ed­ly un­der­way in­side the PNM.

This state­ment was an un­usu­al ode to tar­get­ed per­for­mance:

“Our eco­nom­ic suc­cess is the re­sult of two fac­tors. First­ly, our fis­cal mea­sures and in­cen­tives have stim­u­lat­ed the man­u­fac­tur­ing and ser­vices sec­tors to the ex­tent that $35 bil­lion in an­nu­al rev­enue now comes from the non-oil sec­tor, and sec­ond­ly, the hard work and per­se­ver­ance of the Prime Min­is­ter and the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter has paid off, and even in the face of weak prices and re­duced pro­duc­tion, their ne­go­ti­a­tions with the multi­na­tion­al oil, gas, pro­cess­ing, and petro­chem­i­cal com­pa­nies have yield­ed bil­lions of dol­lars in in­creased rev­enue on a per­ma­nent and sus­tain­able ba­sis, with much more to come from our cross-bor­der projects. These two gen­tle­men must be giv­en the cred­it that they de­serve ...” (pp 173-174).

The sig­nif­i­cance of this state­ment is based on the fact that Stu­art Young on­ly be­came Min­is­ter of En­er­gy on April 19, 2021, up­on the death of Franklin Khan, who had served as Min­is­ter of En­er­gy from Oc­to­ber 31, 2016, un­til his death. Pri­or to Khan, the En­er­gy Min­is­ter was Nicole Olivierre from Sep­tem­ber 11, 2015, to Oc­to­ber 30, 2016.

The ex­tolling of the virtues of Young along­side those of Row­ley as the he­roes of in­ter­na­tion­al en­er­gy ne­go­ti­a­tions that he says were ben­e­fi­cial to the coun­try in the face of a chal­leng­ing glob­al en­er­gy sit­u­a­tion is very sig­nif­i­cant. It is not on­ly pro­ject­ing a lev­el of per­for­mance wor­thy of lead­er­ship of the coun­try but al­so in­cludes a pow­er­ful suc­ces­sion plan­ning mes­sage in terms of the lead­er­ship of the par­ty and the Gov­ern­ment.

The oth­er sig­nif­i­cant po­lit­i­cal as­pect of the bud­get was the amount of time de­vot­ed to To­ba­go. The sig­nif­i­cance of the sis­ter isle is cen­tral to the for­tunes of the PNM in terms of the next gen­er­al elec­tion. Of the five spe­cial projects an­nounced in the bud­get, three of them are based in To­ba­go.

Ac­cord­ing to Min­is­ter Im­bert:

“1. Di­vest­ment of Mag­dale­na Ho­tel. The sale or lease of the Mag­dale­na Ho­tel in To­ba­go.

2. New In­ter­na­tion­al Ho­tel De­vel­op­ment. A re­quest for pro­pos­als to de­vel­op a new 5-star in­ter­na­tion­al­ly brand­ed re­sort ho­tel on the Gov­ern­ment-owned Buc­coo Es­tate in To­ba­go. This project is ex­pect­ed to be on the scale of the pre­vi­ous­ly pro­posed San­dals Ho­tel and if suc­cess­ful, will bring tremen­dous eco­nom­ic ben­e­fits to the peo­ple of To­ba­go.

3.To­ba­go Ma­ri­na. A re­quest for pro­pos­als to de­vel­op a yacht­ing ma­ri­na in Low­lands in To­ba­go, just south­west of the Pe­tit Trou La­goon, on lands cur­rent­ly be­ing ac­quired by the Gov­ern­ment from the Plan­ta­tions Es­tate. This will be a pri­vate-pub­lic part­ner­ship and will in­volve the fol­low­ing fea­tures:

• ↓Dock­ing fa­cil­i­ties for at least 50 plea­sure craft, both pow­er and sail, up to 18 me­tres in length;

• ↓Stor­age fa­cil­i­ties on land for a fur­ther 50 plea­sure craft;

• ↓Re­fu­elling, wash­ing and re­pair fa­cil­i­ties, ma­rine and boat chan­dlers, stores, and a restau­rant;

• ↓A slip­way to trans­fer a trail­ered boat in­to the wa­ter;

• ↓A trav­el lift and fork­lifts for lift­ing boats out of the wa­ter and trans­port­ing them to the hard stand; and

• ↓A break­wa­ter and dredged ap­proach chan­nel and basin …” (pp. 151-152).

These projects have the po­ten­tial to bring many jobs to To­ba­go. The THA has al­ready in­di­cat­ed that there has been no con­sul­ta­tion on the five-star ho­tel project, so the po­ten­tial for po­lit­i­cal con­flict to emerge is present.

This was not your tra­di­tion­al elec­tion bud­get, but rather its elec­tion-ori­ent­ed char­ac­ter was based on (i) promis­es for fu­ture sweet­ners from the pro­ject­ed Drag­on Gas and oth­er cross-bor­der gas deals with Venezuela, (ii) the im­ple­men­ta­tion of an in­creased min­i­mum wage for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers; (iii) the ex­ten­sive ac­count­ing for nine years of per­for­mance and lat­ter-day growth, (iv) the ex­ten­sive dis­course about To­ba­go and its al­lo­ca­tions as well as projects, (v) the change from the neg­a­tive nar­ra­tive in the af­fi­davit sworn by Min­is­ter Im­bert for the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty case that was re­cent­ly de­cid­ed by the Privy Coun­cil to his pos­i­tive bud­get state­ment last Mon­day.

Elec­tions soon?

Dr Hamid Ghany is Pro­fes­sor of Con­sti­tu­tion­al Af­fairs and Par­lia­men­tary Stud­ies at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies (UWI). He was al­so ap­point­ed an hon­orary pro­fes­sor of the UWI up­on his re­tire­ment in Oc­to­ber 2021. He con­tin­ues his re­search and pub­li­ca­tions and al­so does some teach­ing at the UWI.