“The Row­ley PNM plans to im­pose an in­her­i­tance tax… a tax on ben­e­fi­cia­ries re­ceiv­ing mon­ey or prop­er­ty from a de­ceased per­son’s es­tate, this tax will be worse than the prop­er­ty tax.”

Those were the words of Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, de­liv­ered at a Mon­day Night Fo­rum in June 2023. It was a clear warn­ing, framed as a de­fence of or­di­nary cit­i­zens against what she de­scribed as yet an­oth­er puni­tive mea­sure by the PNM. It was meant to draw a line be­tween what she claimed the PNM would do and what she promised her gov­ern­ment would nev­er do.

Less than a year in­to of­fice, that line has van­ished.

The very “in­her­i­tance tax” she warned the coun­try about has now been im­posed in an­oth­er form by her own ad­min­is­tra­tion. This is not a tech­ni­cal pol­i­cy ad­just­ment or a mis­un­der­stand­ing. It is a di­rect con­tra­dic­tion of her own pub­lic state­ments. And when a gov­ern­ment so quick­ly does the very thing it once con­demned, the is­sue is not just pol­i­cy, it is cred­i­bil­i­ty.

It is no se­cret that the PNM’s record on gov­er­nance, eco­nom­ic man­age­ment and ac­count­abil­i­ty speaks for it­self. For years, Trinidad and To­ba­go en­dured end­less waste, mis­man­age­ment, tone-deaf de­ci­sions and an ad­min­is­tra­tion that grew in­creas­ing­ly dis­con­nect­ed from the lived re­al­i­ty of cit­i­zens. The elec­torate’s frus­tra­tion with that era was re­al and jus­ti­fied, and they were vot­ed out.

The new Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar-led Gov­ern­ment, be­fore the elec­tion, promised the pop­u­la­tion re­lief, sta­bil­i­ty and a clear break from the past. What they are ex­pe­ri­enc­ing to­day in­stead is a steady ex­pan­sion of tax­es, fees and costs that touch near­ly every as­pect of dai­ly life. Hous­ing-re­lat­ed charges, ser­vice fees and now in­her­i­tance it­self have all been brought in­to the Gov­ern­ment’s rev­enue net.

This rais­es a fun­da­men­tal ques­tion: Did this Gov­ern­ment know what it planned to do once elect­ed, or is it im­pro­vis­ing in re­al time?

If these mea­sures were al­ways part of the plan, then vot­ers were de­lib­er­ate­ly mis­led. If they were not, then it means nine and a half years in op­po­si­tion pro­duced no co­her­ent eco­nom­ic roadmap. Ei­ther way, the re­sult is the same: a pop­u­la­tion pay­ing the price for an­oth­er po­lit­i­cal fail­ure.

Af­ter near­ly a decade out of of­fice, there should have been de­tailed poli­cies, cost­ed pro­pos­als and a clear gov­ern­ing phi­los­o­phy ready to be im­ple­ment­ed. In­stead, de­ci­sions ap­pear re­ac­tive, rushed and poor­ly com­mu­ni­cat­ed. That sense of dis­or­der is re­in­forced when se­nior min­is­ters seem un­cer­tain about their own port­fo­lios.

How does a Hous­ing Min­is­ter not know the Gov­ern­ment’s hous­ing pol­i­cy?

David Lee’s in­abil­i­ty to clear­ly ar­tic­u­late that pol­i­cy is not a mi­nor em­bar­rass­ment. Hous­ing af­fects af­ford­abil­i­ty, fam­i­ly sta­bil­i­ty and na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment. When the min­is­ter re­spon­si­ble ap­pears out of sync, it sug­gests deep­er dys­func­tion. Is he there to gov­ern, or mere­ly to oc­cu­py space? And if he is not ful­ly in com­mand of his brief, who is?

These mo­ments in­vite un­com­fort­able but nec­es­sary ques­tions about how this Gov­ern­ment ac­tu­al­ly func­tions be­hind closed doors. Who is mak­ing de­ci­sions? Where is the co­or­di­na­tion? Why do poli­cies ap­pear with­out con­text, ex­pla­na­tion or pub­lic en­gage­ment?

The HDC’s new pol­i­cy fol­lows the same trou­bling pat­tern. A fee on the trans­fer and sale of those homes ig­nores why the HDC ex­ists in the first place. These hous­es were built for low­er-in­come fam­i­lies strug­gling to own a home, not as rev­enue tools for the State.

This is why the anger feels deep­er than eco­nom­ics. It is about trust.

And it forces an­oth­er ques­tion in­to the na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion: Why does this Gov­ern­ment feel like the PNM on steroids?

The same dis­con­nect. The same dis­mis­sive, ag­gres­sive tone. The same sense that poli­cies are be­ing done to the pop­u­la­tion rather than with them. In some cas­es, it feels worse, more ag­gres­sive, more chaot­ic and less ac­count­able, am­pli­fy­ing the very gov­er­nance fail­ures it once crit­i­cised.

This fu­els a dan­ger­ous re­al­i­ty that elec­tions change faces but not be­hav­iour. Once in of­fice, par­ties aban­don prin­ci­ple in favour of con­ve­nience; the suf­fer­ing of cit­i­zens is treat­ed as an ac­cept­able cost of po­lit­i­cal pow­er.

It in­creas­ing­ly ap­pears that the fail­ures of the PNM, waste, mis­man­age­ment, weak ac­count­abil­i­ty and poor trans­paren­cy are treat­ed as a li­cense for this Gov­ern­ment to be­have no bet­ter. Con­stant­ly in­vok­ing the past does not an­swer the most im­por­tant ques­tions of the present: What is the Gov­ern­ment’s vi­sion for Trinidad and To­ba­go? Where is the crime strat­e­gy, the for­eign pol­i­cy frame­work, the eco­nom­ic di­rec­tion?

Gov­er­nance de­mands hon­esty. A gov­ern­ment that cam­paigns on fear and then gov­erns by im­i­ta­tion un­der­mines its own le­git­i­ma­cy.

What is clear is that the pop­u­la­tion de­serves bet­ter than re­cy­cled fail­ures, bro­ken promis­es, and lead­er­ship that says one thing and does an­oth­er. When pow­er changes hands, but the bur­den on cit­i­zens on­ly grows heav­ier, the is­sue is not who gov­erns, but how, and whether lead­er­ship is be­ing ex­er­cised in the pub­lic in­ter­est or mere­ly in the pur­suit of pow­er.

Mick­ela Pan­day is Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front and At­tor­ney at Law

Email- pa­tri­ot­ic.front.tt@gmail.com