The claim by MP Bri­an Man­ning that his fa­ther, for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, had a vi­sion for Trinidad and To­ba­go is not a false one. The mak­ing of Vi­sion 2020 was a very in­clu­sive process that brought to­geth­er large num­bers of thought­ful and ca­pa­ble peo­ple un­der the chair­man­ship of Arthur Lok Jack. I wrote the doc­u­ment on ter­tiary pol­i­cy on be­half of a small team.

Vi­sion 2020 nev­er got to the point of im­ple­men­ta­tion. It did not get sup­port from the then Pan­day op­po­si­tion. Man­ning lost the 2010 elec­tion. The Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, which won the elec­tion as a coali­tion, had a ground­break­ing man­i­festo of its own, which I had writ­ten to­geth­er with a work­ing group from all strands of the coali­tion. As Min­is­ter of Plan­ning and Sus­tain­able De­vel­op­ment, I trans­lat­ed the man­i­festo in­to a three-year Medi­um Term Pol­i­cy Frame­work in 2011 at the re­quest of the then prime min­is­ter, with the sup­port of pub­lic ser­vants. Re­ports on per­for­mance on the MTPF were laid in Par­lia­ment in 2012, 2013, and 2014.

The sto­ry that the Vi­sion 2020 doc­u­ments were dumped in the La Basse and burnt is just not true. In 2014, an of­fi­cial of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment re­quest­ed an elec­tron­ic copy of Vi­sion 2020, which was pro­vid­ed to him as a pub­lic doc­u­ment stored in the Min­istry of Plan­ning.

In 2016, af­ter win­ning the gen­er­al elec­tion the pre­vi­ous year, the Dr Kei­th Row­ley-led gov­ern­ment pre­pared Vi­sion 2030. But in 2022, they as­sem­bled a team in the midst of the COVID cri­sis to do what they called a Roadmap.

In 2015, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress had its own man­i­festo, which I had pre­pared with in­puts from oth­er min­is­te­r­i­al col­leagues. A quick look at pages 13 to 15 (in­clu­sive) of that 2015 man­i­festo will re­veal that the fol­low­ing projects were list­ed for ac­tion on de­vel­op­ment:

Smart, sus­tain­able city of Port-of-Spain

San Fer­nan­do Wa­ter­front Project, for which ex­ten­sive con­sul­ta­tions were held with res­i­dents over sev­er­al evenings. Some el­e­ments of that plan were act­ed up­on by the Row­ley gov­ern­ment with pub­lic funds. But in 2014, the San Fer­nan­do project had been recon­cep­tu­alised as a dom­i­nant­ly pri­vate sec­tor-led project.

The high­way trans­port con­nec­tion from Ma­yaro to San Fer­nan­do

The ac­cess road to Ch­aguara­mas from Port-of-Spain, which was con­ceived in terms of trans­porta­tion, world marathon and cy­cling events an­nu­al­ly, and a re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion of Care­nage, which is a town that now has the ocean front at its back. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar had an­nounced this as a Cause­way in 2015.

Oth­er projects in­clud­ed en­vi­ron­men­tal­ly sen­si­tive de­vel­op­ment of 11% of Ch­aguara­mas. A plan was com­plet­ed, and one con­sul­ta­tion was held at the Radis­son. The Board­walk and the Zi­pline were done in 2013, and the Na­tion­al Spa­tial Strat­e­gy was laid in Par­lia­ment in that same year, fol­low­ing the pas­sage of the Plan­ning and Fa­cil­i­ta­tion of De­vel­op­ment Bill. Sev­en eco­nom­ic zones across the coun­try were al­so iden­ti­fied in the 2015 man­i­festo of the UNC, to­geth­er with a fo­cus on the Blue (ocean), Green (en­vi­ron­men­tal and eco­log­i­cal as­sets), and Or­ange (cul­ture and the arts) econ­o­my.

Dry dock fa­cil­i­ties were in­clud­ed, and a port study was com­plet­ed through the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Board. A deep­wa­ter port was rec­om­mend­ed.

Part of the now Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print was al­so pre­sent­ed, per­haps in a pre­lim­i­nary form, by Min­is­ter of Works and In­fra­struc­ture Jear­lean John when she was Chair­man of Ude­cott un­der the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, to the Con­trac­tors As­so­ci­a­tion meet­ing at which then Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar was the main speak­er. These would have in­clud­ed some of the wa­ter­front and city de­vel­op­ment projects.

The bal­ance be­tween pol­i­cy con­ti­nu­ity and dis­rup­tion when par­ty gov­ern­ment changes has been a prob­lem in scores of coun­tries. Trinidad and To­ba­go had thir­ty years of pol­i­cy con­ti­nu­ity with one par­ty, which by 1986 had tak­en our coun­try in­to bank­rupt­cy. Fol­low­ing that, we had 13 years of pol­i­cy con­ti­nu­ity across two dif­fer­ent par­ty gov­ern­ments, NAR and PNM, af­ter the IMF dis­rup­tion of 1988, which led to re­cov­ery, growth, and buoy­an­cy as nat­ur­al gas be­gan to an­chor the econ­o­my. The 2010–2015 pe­ri­od fo­cused on ed­u­ca­tion, health, and oth­er so­cial in­fra­struc­ture. The pe­ri­od 2015 to 2025 was a ten-year pe­ri­od which in­clud­ed COVID, low en­er­gy pro­duc­tion and prices, a sev­en-year re­ces­sion, and a 17% de­cline in GDP.

A plan for phys­i­cal de­vel­op­ment now would be help­ful to na­tion­al re­cov­ery. Pri­vate fi­nanc­ing and pre­ci­sion im­ple­men­ta­tion would be key in this time of re­duced rev­enue and high debt.

Three-year rolling plans, agreed by Par­lia­ment, which would pro­vide for both con­ti­nu­ity and change—whether par­ties in gov­ern­ment change or not—might be a way of avoid­ing sense­less quar­rels over own­er­ship of plans.