Dur­ing his wind-up week in of­fice, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley high­light­ed what he ob­vi­ous­ly con­sid­ered his ma­jor achieve­ments and con­tri­bu­tions to the de­vel­op­ment of T&T and its peo­ple dur­ing his ten-year term of of­fice.

Re­cur­ring in his re­cap­ping was the con­struc­tion of the hos­pi­tals of Point Fortin, Ari­ma, and the block of the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al, the To­ba­go Air­port Ter­mi­nal Build­ing; sep­a­rate­ly, was his Gov­ern­ment’s han­dling of the emer­gency wrought by COVID-19 and its dead­ly vis­i­ta­tion on the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion.

What such con­tri­bu­tions have go­ing for them is ser­vice to the na­tion­al pop­u­la­tion. Vi­tal health in­fra­struc­ture of a coun­try, par­tic­u­lar­ly when it meets the needs of peo­ple of all so­cial class­es and in­comes, can be con­sid­ered the serum of life; with­out a healthy pop­u­la­tion, all is lost. The ter­mi­nal build­ing at Crown Point has not on­ly the po­ten­tial to serve more ad­e­quate­ly the needs of trav­ellers be­tween Port-of-Spain and Scar­bor­ough but al­so for eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment through tourism in To­ba­go, with pro­duc­tion and ser­vice link­ages to Trinidad.

One out­stand­ing fea­ture of the high-cost projects, though, is the need, in ad­di­tion to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s scruti­ny of ex­pen­di­ture, for deep foren­sic au­dit­ing, which can tell the na­tion whether there were wastages and cor­rup­tion in the man­age­ment of the big projects.

T&T has too long a his­to­ry of ques­tion­able and fraud­u­lent deal­ings, with hun­dreds of mil­lions spent with­out prop­er ac­count­ing—suc­ceed­ing gov­ern­ments and par­ties have laid blame against each oth­er for al­leged cor­rupt prac­tices.

Above all the util­i­ty of the con­struc­tion fa­cil­i­ties, I con­sid­er the Prime Min­is­ter and his Gov­ern­ment’s ef­fort at keep­ing in check the po­ten­tial­ly ex­plo­sive spread of COVID-19 from be­ing a health dis­as­ter to res­onate as the ad­min­is­tra­tion’s great­est achieve­ment.

This con­clu­sion is reached with­out seek­ing to di­min­ish the im­por­tance of the health in­fra­struc­ture and air­port fa­cil­i­ty for day-to-day trav­ellers and to fa­cil­i­tate the po­ten­tial for eco­nom­ic growth (tourism) and pos­si­ble long-term de­vel­op­ment. I do so be­cause I con­sid­er the con­struc­tion of health in­fra­struc­ture the ba­sic re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of a gov­ern­ment in of­fice with in­vest­ment ca­pac­i­ty to do so.

COVID-19 was a shot out of the blue and pre­sent­ed a unique chal­lenge. PM Row­ley gained high marks for keep­ing pub­lic ser­vants in pay, there­by pre­vent­ing a ma­jor dis­as­ter from be­falling the econ­o­my if pub­lic ser­vants were un­able to meet mort­gage pay­ments, ad­e­quate­ly deal with their gro­cery bills, and keep chil­dren in school when they were re­opened.

Re­gard­ing treat­ment and pre­ven­tion mea­sures, the lead­er­ship of PM Row­ley in the COVID-19 pe­ri­od was to de­vel­op poli­cies and pro­grammes on the ad­vice of those with spe­cialised knowl­edge to treat the virus and its crip­pling ef­fects. He recog­nised the val­ue of lend­ing a lis­ten­ing ear, not usu­al­ly a fea­ture of gov­ern­ments. He val­ued the ad­vice, poli­cies, and pre­scribed mea­sures of the health pro­fes­sion­als and in­sti­tu­tions by ho­n­our­ing Dr Roshan Paras­ram and his staff; we shall come to the ad­vice he dis­re­gard­ed.

The Gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­ven­tion in Petrotrin and the even­tu­al cre­ation of Her­itage in­to a prof­itable state-owned oil and gas com­pa­ny, along with the re­cent in­di­ca­tion from PM Row­ley that hope­ful­ly an arrange­ment will be made to sell the re­fin­ery fa­cil­i­ties, can turn out to be amongst the ma­jor achieve­ments of PM Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion. This is not to be un­con­scious of the deep pain that the clo­sure of Petrotrin in­flict­ed on work­ers and their fam­i­lies in the area.

Then there are less sig­nif­i­cant achieve­ments, such as the in­crease in per­son­al in­come tax al­lowances, the for­give­ness of in­ter­est owed—which re­turned bil­lions to the Trea­sury that may nev­er have been re­cov­ered—and a de­crease in prop­er­ty tax. The es­tab­lish­ment of a new tax­a­tion sys­tem, pro­vid­ed it does not prove to be re­gres­sive, ie, not dig deep­er in­to the pock­ets of mid­dle- and low­er-in­come class­es, can be suc­cess­ful if it shuts off leak­ages from the pay­ment of cor­po­ra­tion tax­es.

PM Row­ley’s man­age­ment of his suc­ces­sor­ship is a ques­tion for PNM in­sti­tu­tions and mem­bers from the high­est to the low­est lev­el to ad­dress. Notwith­stand­ing such a par­ty re­spon­si­bil­i­ty, the dic­ta­tion as to who should lead has an im­pact on the na­tion­al poli­ty, as it con­tin­ues the con­trol by an oli­garchy of the pol­i­tics. The arms of the PNM, which al­lowed for it to con­tin­ue along the pat­tern set for it from its birth, have once again con­cre­tised the lead­er­ship dom­i­na­tion and have left it as the pat­tern adopt­ed and fol­lowed by all po­lit­i­cal par­ties and the po­lit­i­cal cul­ture of T&T.

What de­volves from that dom­i­nant lead­er­ship cul­ture is that PM Row­ley, one of the po­lit­i­cal lead­ers of the post-in­de­pen­dence pe­ri­od in­to the 21st cen­tu­ry, did not seek to trans­form the na­ture of gov­ern­ment and gov­er­nance in­to one which in­volved the pop­u­la­tion. In­stead, the gov­er­nance pat­tern fol­lowed by PM/po­lit­i­cal leader Row­ley con­tin­ued the cul­ture of the mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion of peo­ple to the pe­riph­ery of so­ci­ety; he pur­sued faith­ful­ly the pat­tern of colo­nial gov­er­nance set out for him and so­ci­ety by Britain.

The lat­ter is of vi­tal sig­nif­i­cance, as the break­away from top-down rule by an oli­garchy through the in­va­sion of the mass­es of the play­ing field can make a dra­mat­ic dif­fer­ence to hu­man, po­lit­i­cal, and eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment.

To be con­tin­ued.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er–free­lance jour­nal­ist, for­mer re­porter/cur­rent af­fairs pro­gramme host and News Di­rec­tor at TTT, pro­gramme pro­duc­er/cur­rent af­fairs di­rec­tor at Ra­dio Trinidad, cor­re­spon­dent for the BBC Caribbean Ser­vice and the As­so­ci­at­ed Press, grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona and St Au­gus­tine–In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions.