Now that the Op­po­si­tion has pub­licly ob­ject­ed to the salary in­creas­es pro­posed by the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion (SRC), we anx­ious­ly await the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion on the mat­ter.

The Op­po­si­tion's po­si­tion was, in any case, al­ways go­ing to be aca­d­e­m­ic, since it is the Cab­i­net that is re­spon­si­ble for de­cid­ing on the pro­posed wage hike, even though the re­port is de­bat­ed in the Par­lia­ment.

At this point, how­ev­er, it is dif­fi­cult to see how the Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion could jus­ti­fy the pro­posed in­creas­es, giv­en the pre­vail­ing labour and eco­nom­ic cli­mate that has pushed pub­lic opin­ion vast­ly out of its favour.

There is as yet no clear in­di­ca­tion of what the Cab­i­net will do when it meets to dis­cuss the pro­pos­als. In the mean­time, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said yes­ter­day that the re­port should not be seen from a po­lit­i­cal stand­point on­ly, as the salaries of sev­er­al oth­er pub­lic ser­vants are al­so to be con­sid­ered. Nonethe­less, as a long­stand­ing politi­cian, the min­is­ter ought to know that the pub­lic will not buy that ar­gu­ment.

At the same time, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has open­ly de­clared that she will not ac­cept an in­crease, telling a pub­lic meet­ing on Mon­day night that while she has no is­sue with the pub­lic ser­vants and ju­di­cial of­fi­cials men­tioned in the re­port get­ting the rec­om­mend­ed hikes, she does not be­lieve that the Pres­i­dent, the Prime Min­is­ter and Op­po­si­tion Leader should be paid more at this time.

This amounts to noth­ing more than po­lit­i­cal ma­noeu­vring, as Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, be­ing the for­mer prime min­is­ter whose Cab­i­net ac­cept­ed the last SRC re­port that rec­om­mend­ed salary in­creas­es in 2013, knows on­ly too well that an SRC re­port must ei­ther be ac­cept­ed or re­ject­ed as a whole.

The Cab­i­net must ei­ther de­cide, as was done ear­li­er this year, to re­ject the en­tire thing and have the SRC present an­oth­er re­port at a lat­er date or ac­cept it as pre­sent­ed. As jus­ti­fied as the in­creas­es may seem to those who stand to ben­e­fit, par­tic­u­lar­ly since the last in­crease was 13 years ago, the Cab­i­net must con­sid­er if the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal, eco­nom­ic and labour cli­mate is right.

From our per­spec­tive, it is cer­tain­ly not, and ap­prov­ing this re­port is akin to light­ing the fuse to a gun­pow­der keg.

With gen­er­al elec­tion just months away, with the Chief Per­son­nel Of­fi­cer en­ter­ing fresh dis­cus­sions with trade unions, and with port work­ers, T&TEC staff and uni­ver­si­ty teach­ers all demon­strat­ing for bet­ter wages, there is sim­ply no jus­ti­fi­ca­tion for salary hikes as high as 47 per cent in the case of the Prime Min­is­ter and 76 per cent in the case of the Op­po­si­tion Leader, while at the same time telling or­di­nary work­ers that they can­not get any­thing more than four per cent.

Added to that, the whop­ping $150 mil­lion back pay tab on top of the re­cent­ly passed deficit bud­get is not ac­cept­able at this junc­ture. There­fore, sym­pa­thet­ic con­sid­er­a­tions for the non-po­lit­i­cal can­di­dates un­der the SRC re­port can­not be the de­ter­min­ing fac­tor.

The Gov­ern­ment has con­tin­u­ous­ly told us that we are mov­ing in­to a bet­ter eco­nom­ic po­si­tion as key en­er­gy projects come on board in 2026 and on­ward. We are sim­ply not there yet. While we agree that many of the of­fice­hold­ers list­ed in the re­port de­serve in­creas­es, the time is sim­ply not right—not to men­tion that the perks and al­lowances our top of­fi­cials al­ready re­ceive are more than what is af­ford­ed to the av­er­age per­son.

Every­one's time will come, but as it re­lates to hold­ing eco­nom­ic strain and tight­en­ing our belts to­day, what is good for the goose must al­so be good for the gan­der.