A re­treat is a use­ful mech­a­nism for any man­age­ment team. Last week's Cab­i­net re­treat was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­assess and re­fo­cus. Meet­ing away from the dai­ly of­fice rou­tine gave cab­i­net min­is­ters the op­por­tu­ni­ty to talk in­for­mal­ly, fos­ter col­lab­o­ra­tion, build team­work, and boost morale. It ought to have fa­cil­i­tat­ed a fresh view of old prob­lems, to re­view progress, and in that con­text, to re­cal­i­brate ex­ist­ing strate­gies to ad­dress the key chal­lenges and to an­tic­i­pate new de­vel­op­ments. Re­treats are usu­al­ly the on­ly op­por­tu­ni­ty for cab­i­net min­is­ters to ex­plore strate­gic is­sues in depth for a few days.

Like every­thing else, the suc­cess of any re­treat de­pends on the de­gree of prepa­ra­tion be­fore it con­venes. No mat­ter who ac­tu­al­ly runs the re­treat or presents at this fo­rum, it is the leader who con­venes it, helps de­sign it, and ul­ti­mate­ly would be mea­sured by the re­sults the re­treat gen­er­ates. This is the leader’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty.  

The two ur­gent is­sues fac­ing the coun­try are vi­o­lent crime and its eco­nom­ic per­for­mance. Each top­ic has crit­i­cal sub­themes. Un­der­ly­ing the crime sit­u­a­tion are the preva­lence of firearms, the drug trade, gangs, and the in­ca­pac­i­ty of the uni­formed ser­vices to re­spond to the threats posed in each area. In ad­di­tion, a so­cial de­vel­op­ment plat­form is need­ed to build safe com­mu­ni­ties and strong fam­i­lies.

 The per­for­mance of the econ­o­my hinges on the ca­pac­i­ty of the oil, gas, and petro­chem­i­cal sec­tors to gen­er­ate rev­enues in the short term. The chal­lenge is to en­able the pri­vate sec­tor to de­vel­op oth­er busi­ness lines to di­ver­si­fy the for­eign ex­change-gen­er­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ties to re­duce de­pen­dence on fos­sil fu­els in the long term. Achieve­ment of those ob­jec­tives re­quires the Gov­ern­ment to be­come more ef­fi­cient not less ef­fi­cient as demon­strat­ed by the cur­rent weak­ness­es at the Min­istry of Le­gal Af­fairs. Then there is the un­avail­abil­i­ty of for­eign ex­change which is a ma­jor con­straint on new busi­ness growth. Re­pub­lic Bank’s ac­tion in cut­ting cred­it lim­its by half ex­em­pli­fies the prob­lem and gives it a sense of ur­gency.

There are oth­er im­por­tant is­sues that may ap­pear less ur­gent but are vi­tal to T&T’s fu­ture.  Among them are a de­clin­ing pop­u­la­tion, a de­clin­ing labour force, low labour pro­duc­tiv­i­ty, a so­cial se­cu­ri­ty sys­tem in dire need of an over­haul, cli­mate change, and the fu­ture of fos­sil fu­els. These is­sues are in­ter­con­nect­ed and need a cal­i­brat­ed and co­or­di­nat­ed all-of-gov­ern­ment ap­proach.

These were the is­sues cit­i­zens ex­pect­ed the Prime Min­is­ter to ad­dress vig­or­ous­ly to show that the 25 months left in his term would be pro­duc­tive. The post-Cab­i­net, post-re­treat brief­ing was an op­por­tu­ni­ty to demon­strate the reins of gov­ern­ment were in good hands. Per­haps he was be­ing care­ful in his choice of words. Per­haps our ex­pec­ta­tions were too high. In­stead, he equiv­o­cat­ed. The chance to en­gage cit­i­zens in a clear and di­rect lan­guage was lost. It was busi­ness as usu­al.

The Man­a­tee project will be go­ing ahead. There is no oth­er re­al op­tion to boost nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion The Board of Na­tion­al Quar­ries will be changed with a fo­cus on re­build­ing and re­pair­ing the road net­work and re­aligned with the Min­istry of Works and Trans­port. He would write to the Op­po­si­tion on the crime. There was no mes­sage about ac­tions and ex­pect­ed re­sults in the key ar­eas. What will be the lega­cy af­ter ten years in of­fice? The Bud­get speech is next.