My cur­so­ry sur­vey of two ar­eas of the PNM man­i­festo which are of para­mount in­ter­est to the na­tion, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, finds many state­ments of in­tent at en­hanced ef­forts in the two vi­tal ar­eas.

The fo­cus of the pro­jec­tions on the non-en­er­gy sec­tor for mean­ing­ful di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion away from com­plete de­pen­dence on en­er­gy are many, if not com­plete­ly new, in­no­v­a­tive and de­tailed. Tourism; ex­port pro­duc­tion with the as­sis­tance of en­hanced tech­nol­o­gy; ICT; eco­nom­ic in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment to as­sist and fa­cil­i­tate growth and de­vel­op­ment; and poli­cies re­gard­ing lo­cal con­tent re­quire­ments, fi­nanc­ing for small and medi­um-sized busi­ness­es and land own­er­ship.

A pro­ject­ed en­gage­ment with Suri­name, with its far larg­er land size, in agri­cul­tur­al pro­duc­tion is not new, hav­ing been one pro­ject­ed 40 years ago with Guyana in­clud­ed as part of the Cari­com Sin­gle Mar­ket and Econ­o­my; it is a good one.

“We will con­tin­ue to trans­form Trinidad and To­ba­go’s agri­cul­tur­al sec­tor as a mod­ern, com­pet­i­tive pil­lar of eco­nom­ic growth, pub­lic health, and na­tion­al re­silience. Eco­nom­ic zones in every con­stituen­cy fo­cused on pri­or­i­ty crops, cli­mate-re­silient pro­duce, and lo­cal­ly suit­ed.” As part of the trans­for­ma­tion, there is the promise of land dis­tri­b­u­tion for agri­cul­tur­al pur­pos­es.

To achieve a mea­sure of ef­fi­cien­cy in the ar­eas pro­ject­ed for en­hanced de­vel­op­ment, there is the promised “strength­ened col­lab­o­ra­tion across min­istries and state agen­cies, en­sur­ing na­tion­al in­fra­struc­ture in­vest­ments align with Trinidad and To­ba­go’s de­vel­op­ment goals and sus­tain­abil­i­ty pri­or­i­ties.”

A vi­tal con­sti­tu­tion­al mat­ter is fo­cused on re­gard­ing the ad­vance of con­sti­tu­tion­al and leg­isla­tive au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go. Sup­port To­ba­go’s Unique De­vel­op­ment Pri­or­i­ties states the PNM’s doc­u­ment with a flag­ship blue econ­o­my per­tain­ing to the util­i­sa­tion of ocean re­sources. So too is the reg­u­lar­i­sa­tion of land, in­clud­ing fam­i­ly and an­ces­tral lands, and to “Po­si­tion To­ba­go as a Dig­i­tal No­mad and Eco-Busi­ness Tourism Hub, and Po­si­tion To­ba­go as a Prime Glob­al Tourism and Yacht­ing Des­ti­na­tion.”

Re­gard­ing the oth­er el­e­ment of the man­i­festo that I paid a mea­sure of at­ten­tion to, na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, list­ed are such mea­sures as joint ef­forts amongst Cari­com in­sti­tu­tions such as Cari­com Im­pacs, the Re­gion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Sys­tems, In­ter­pol and leg­isla­tive re­form at home.

“To es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Joint Op­er­a­tions Com­mand (NJOC) to in­te­grate the TTPS, TTDF, Cus­toms, Im­mi­gra­tion, and In­tel­li­gence Ser­vices for co­or­di­nat­ed re­spons­es to high-pri­or­i­ty se­cu­ri­ty threats such as or­gan­ised crime, hu­man traf­fick­ing, il­le­gal firearms, and nar­cotics smug­gling.”

The above is a recog­ni­tion that the crim­i­nal­i­ty faced by this and oth­er coun­tries ex­tends be­yond our bor­ders and takes in the ef­forts of in­ter­na­tion­al crim­i­nal­i­ty. It’s not specif­i­cal­ly stat­ed in this re­gard, but the ques­tion is whether there is an in­tent giv­en in the above to go af­ter the traf­fick­ers in drugs, arms and am­mu­ni­tion who are the ones who fi­nance and man­age crime and give the crim­i­nals the weapons to car­ry out un­remit­ting vi­o­lence against cit­i­zens.

“Mod­erni­sa­tion, ex­pan­sion, law en­force­ment and de­fence units in the TTPS and De­fence Force to dis­man­tle or­gan­ised crime, dis­rupt transna­tion­al threats and re­spond de­ci­sive­ly to high-risk se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tions. These units will be in­tel­li­gence-led, high­ly trained, and tech­no­log­i­cal­ly equipped, en­sur­ing pre­ci­sion in crime pre­ven­tion and in­ter­ven­tion,” can sure­ly be use­ful if they are able to root out the gangs, the fi­nanciers, and the or­gan­is­ers of the trade.

Sure­ly, ac­com­plish­ing vi­tal­ly need­ed prison and ju­di­cial re­form is cen­tral to the suc­cess or fail­ure of the above pro­jec­tions.

A num­ber of leg­isla­tive pro­pos­als to counter crime are in­clud­ed in the man­i­festo. Par­lia­men­tary sup­port will be need­ed, and the ef­fec­tive­ness of such leg­is­la­tion has been ques­tioned. How­ev­er, once again, noth­ing jumps out as be­ing new and dy­nam­ic with the ca­pac­i­ty to be able to make a dra­mat­ic dif­fer­ence to the ef­forts of the past ten years of the PNM Gov­ern­ment in of­fice.

His­toric and con­sis­tent fail­ures of ef­fec­tive and time­ly im­ple­men­ta­tion of plans and pro­grammes must be at the fore­front of the think­ing of Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, hence the pro­pos­al to es­tab­lish the Min­istry of Im­ple­men­ta­tion of Ef­fi­cien­cy.

In this re­gard, the long-talked-about re­or­gan­i­sa­tion and mod­erni­sa­tion of the pub­lic sec­tor must be a ma­jor agen­da item. It was an ob­jec­tive back in 1986 of the gov­ern­ment of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion with Min­is­ter Sel­by Wil­son charged with the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. Suc­ceed­ing gov­ern­ments placed the likes of Gor­don Drap­er and Wade Mark re­spon­si­ble for the project; alas, lit­tle suc­cess was achieved.

Nonethe­less, trans­for­ma­tion of the bu­reau­crat­ic and in­ef­fi­cient pub­lic sec­tor, iden­ti­fied by every gov­ern­ment as a pri­or­i­ty, re­mains a need­ed achieve­ment.

Time se­quenc­ing and cir­cum­stances of im­ple­men­ta­tion of the projects list­ed are oth­er un­sure con­sid­er­a­tions. It’s ab­solute­ly in the land of spec­u­la­tion as to the abil­i­ty of the Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment the man­i­festo pro­pos­als.

Miss­ing too are at­tached pro­ject­ed costs of im­ple­men­ta­tion and the sources of rev­enue; un­der­stand­ably, items not eas­i­ly ac­count­ed for on the ba­sis of gen­er­alised pro­pos­als but are need­ed notwith­stand­ing.

Two ini­tia­tives, if fol­lowed, can al­low for the ex­pan­sion of the doc­u­ment state­ments. One, se­ri­ous ar­tic­u­la­tion of the choice pro­pos­als on the plat­form in place of the ra-ra and the po­ten­tial­ly dis­rup­tive race prat­tle. Two, fo­cused in­ter­views with me­dia re­porters can push in­ter­vie­wees be­yond the gen­er­alised state­ments in the man­i­festo, even in the short pe­ri­od ahead; they can be of im­mense val­ue both to the PNM and the elec­torate.

Tony Rakhal-Fras­er is a 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, and grad­u­ate of UWI, CARI­MAC, Mona, and St Au­gus­tine– In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions. He can be reached at tfrasertt@gmail.com