GEISHA KOW­LESSAR ALON­ZO

Po­lit­i­cal rhetoric fu­elled by racial di­vi­sion pos­es an im­me­di­ate, ma­te­r­i­al threat to T&T’s eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty, ac­cord­ing to a grow­ing cho­rus of in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­perts, econ­o­mist, and busi­ness lead­ers.

As the coun­try al­ready nav­i­gates for­eign ex­change short­ages, volatile en­er­gy rev­enues and broad­er macro­eco­nom­ic pres­sures, they warn that stok­ing eth­nic frac­tures is no longer just dirty pol­i­tics—it is an ac­tive eco­nom­ic li­a­bil­i­ty that risks dri­ving away for­eign in­vest­ment, trig­ger­ing do­mes­tic cap­i­tal flight and crip­pling work­place pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

The height­ened con­cern fol­lows in­tense pub­lic back­lash over racial­ly charged re­marks made sur­round­ing African Eman­ci­pa­tion cel­e­bra­tions by po­lit­i­cal fig­ures, in­clud­ing Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

With par­ti­san hos­til­i­ty spilling out of cam­paign win­dows and in­to rou­tine gov­er­nance, ex­perts warn that the re­sult­ing un­pre­dictabil­i­ty com­pro­mis­es long-term na­tion­al growth.

Adding aca­d­e­m­ic con­text to the de­bate, in­ter­na­tion­al re­la­tions ex­pert Prof Andy Knight warned that na­tion­al lead­er­ship lean­ing in­to di­vi­sive lan­guage dam­ages T&T’s gov­ern­abil­i­ty and glob­al com­mer­cial stand­ing.

Knight em­pha­sised that for a small, open, mul­ti­cul­tur­al econ­o­my, so­cial co­he­sion is not sim­ply an ab­stract so­cial ide­al, but an es­sen­tial macro­eco­nom­ic pre­req­ui­site.

He not­ed that po­lit­i­cal po­lar­i­sa­tion in­flicts mul­ti-di­men­sion­al dam­age across three in­ter­con­nect­ed pil­lars of the econ­o­my: in­vestor con­fi­dence, in­ter­nal work­place pro­duc­tiv­i­ty and the strength of the na­tion’s glob­al rep­u­ta­tion.

Elab­o­rat­ing on the me­chan­ics of in­vestor be­hav­iour, Knight said, “In­vestor con­fi­dence, in­vestors — both lo­cal and for­eign — tend to look for po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty and so­cial co­he­sion in coun­tries in which they in­vest. When na­tion­al lead­er­ship is seen as di­vid­ed along race or eth­nic lines, this cre­ates un­cer­tain­ty. Un­cer­tain­ty makes busi­ness­es de­lay hir­ing, de­lay ex­pan­sion and de­lay in­vest­ment. Cap­i­tal is mo­bile. It goes where it feels safe.”

Be­yond cap­i­tal al­lo­ca­tion, Knight high­light­ed how di­vi­sive po­lit­i­cal rhetoric desta­bilis­es in­ter­nal eco­nom­ic op­er­a­tions by weak­en­ing work­place co­he­sion and over­all labour out­put.

“Busi­ness­es de­pend on a work­force that feels like it be­longs. Di­vi­sive rhetoric in­creas­es work­place ten­sion, re­duces trust be­tween com­mu­ni­ties and can spill in­to con­sumer boy­cotts or labour is­sues. That dri­ves up costs and dri­ves down pro­duc­tiv­i­ty,” he fur­ther ex­plained.

Fur­ther­more, Knight un­der­scored the strate­gic im­por­tance of pro­tect­ing the na­tion’s in­ter­na­tion­al im­age say­ing, “TT is mar­ket­ed and sold to the world as a sta­ble, rich­ly di­verse and tol­er­ant place in which to do busi­ness with re­spect to en­er­gy, fi­nance, cre­ative in­dus­tries, tourism, etc. If the in­ter­na­tion­al im­age of TT be­comes ‘po­lit­i­cal­ly frac­tured,’ it makes it hard­er to at­tract in­vest­ment, to at­tract tourism and to con­vince skilled di­as­po­ra tal­ent to come back.”

Re­in­forc­ing these warn­ings, for­mer di­rec­tor of the In­sti­tute of In­ter­na­tion­al Re­la­tions at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, Dr An­tho­ny Gon­za­les, stressed that in­ter­na­tion­al and lo­cal in­vestors are close­ly mon­i­tor­ing how eth­nic re­la­tions un­fold.

He warned that com­mer­cial en­ter­pris­es would in­evitably hes­i­tate to in­vest in a cli­mate per­ceived as civil­ly un­sta­ble.

“The im­pli­ca­tions of that for busi­ness is sim­ply that if eth­nic re­la­tions break down, busi­ness may have sec­ond thoughts about in­vest­ing here, it’s very clear to me they’re not go­ing to come to a coun­try which they be­lieve to be un­civ­il,” Gon­za­les stat­ed, adding, “If they see that there’s some kind of war­ring fac­tions here in the coun­try and that could spill over in­to some kind of civ­il con­flict and so forth, then they would be wary to come here and in­vest.”

Ex­pand­ing on the fi­nan­cial me­chan­ics of this so­ci­etal ten­sion, re­gion­al econ­o­mist Bar­ba­di­an Je­re­my Stephen of­fered an as­sess­ment of how race re­la­tions are ac­tive­ly re­shap­ing in­vestor psy­chol­o­gy.

He ob­served that while this coun­try has his­tor­i­cal­ly nav­i­gat­ed a com­plex mul­ti-racial dy­nam­ic, in­tense eth­nic fric­tion was tra­di­tion­al­ly con­fined to ac­tive elec­tion cam­paigns.

“Trinidad and To­ba­go has al­ways had, in my view, a very com­plex en­vi­ron­ment of race re­la­tions, par­tic­u­lar­ly rais­ing its head dur­ing elec­tions,” Stephen ex­plained ,stat­ing, “This is the first time in my adult life I’ve been aware of it seep­ing in­to the nor­mal course of the po­lit­i­cal cy­cle, so to speak... should it be­come a bit more ag­gres­sive, it could be­come prob­lem­at­ic in terms of at­tract­ing not just for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment...but def­i­nite­ly in­ter­nal­ly it could cause is­sues. It could cause in­flat­ed cap­i­tal should those with mon­ey across the race lines be­gin to think that they are go­ing to fear for their safe­ty.”

Stephen fur­ther point­ed out that degra­da­tion of trust “across racial lines, across the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, to be hon­est, it seems way worse” and is al­ready man­i­fest­ing in sub­tle yet dam­ag­ing fi­nan­cial trends, no­tably re­gard­ing the na­tion’s on­go­ing for­eign ex­change short­age and de­fen­sive cap­i­tal move­ment.

“There’s a sig­nif­i­cant in­flow of for­eign ex­change in­to Bar­ba­dos re­al es­tate, for ex­am­ple,” Stephen ob­served. “And we’re not talk­ing about the bil­lion­aires and mul­ti­mil­lion­aires of Trinidad. We’re talk­ing about the av­er­age per­son that could af­ford a mort­gage, a sim­ple mort­gage, is de­cid­ing, well, let me in­vest in Bar­ba­dos... it’s def­i­nite­ly a store of cap­i­tal. That’s a ma­jor sign of erod­ing trust.”

Ad­dress­ing the path for­ward, Stephen em­pha­sised that the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for de-es­ca­lat­ing ten­sion rests heav­i­ly with po­lit­i­cal lead­ers, who must ac­tive­ly adopt more con­cil­ia­to­ry stances to re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence rather than brush­ing the is­sue aside.

“The nar­ra­tive is still in the Gov­ern­ment’s court, and in the name of prob­a­bly sta­bil­is­ing the econ­o­my, should prob­a­bly ad­dress the is­sue over time in more agree­able stances,” Stephen ad­vised.

“The Gov­ern­ment should re­al­ly con­cern it­self about han­dling not just the econ­o­my, but en­sur­ing that all sides of the po­lit­i­cal di­vi­sion work to­geth­er to en­sure Trinidad sur­vives the in­sta­bil­i­ty of the world. Part of that, again, is racial re­la­tions. It shouldn’t be seen or in­ter­pret­ed as the line is be­ing drawn down the mid­dle again, and whoso­ev­er doesn’t like it can suf­fer and move on.”

Pri­vate sec­tor de­mand for sta­bil­i­ty and growth

From a com­mer­cial stand­point, Cur­tis Williams, chair­man of the To­ba­go Di­vi­sion of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, em­pha­sised that cor­po­rate con­fi­dence is deeply tied to the gen­er­al tone of na­tion­al lead­er­ship.

Williams stressed that busi­nes­sown­ers eval­u­ate a coun­try not on­ly by its for­mal mon­e­tary poli­cies, but by the over­all pre­dictabil­i­ty of its so­cio-po­lit­i­cal cli­mate.

“From a busi­ness per­spec­tive, in­vestor con­fi­dence is in­flu­enced not on­ly by fis­cal and eco­nom­ic poli­cies but al­so by the tone of na­tion­al dis­course,” Williams stat­ed adding, “In­vestors val­ue po­lit­i­cal sta­bil­i­ty, so­cial co­he­sion, pre­dictabil­i­ty and a clear fo­cus on eco­nom­ic growth. At this time, our coun­try’s pri­or­i­ty should be eco­nom­ic growth, job cre­ation, at­tract­ing in­vest­ment, im­prov­ing the ease of do­ing busi­ness and strength­en­ing in­vestor con­fi­dence.”

Williams not­ed the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty ea­ger­ly an­tic­i­pates con­sis­tent pol­i­cy fo­cussed on long-term re­silience, say­ing the pri­vate sec­tor would wel­come con­tin­ued at­ten­tion to poli­cies that en­cour­age en­tre­pre­neur­ship, fa­cil­i­tate in­vest­ment, ad­dress for­eign ex­change chal­lenges, im­prove in­fra­struc­ture and cre­ate sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic op­por­tu­ni­ties for all cit­i­zens.

Busi­ness­woman Di­ane Hadad al­so ex­pressed deep con­cern over the de­te­ri­o­ra­tion of Par­lia­men­tary deco­rum, point­ing out that na­tion­al in­sti­tu­tions them­selves are pro­ject­ing neg­a­tiv­i­ty to po­ten­tial fi­nan­cial part­ners.

“At the end of the day, our Par­lia­ment has been used and abused to make deroga­to­ry re­marks and al­low peo­ple the free­dom to just in­sult and ac­cuse each oth­er,” she said adding, “And there­fore, that be­hav­iour is in­spect­ed by in­vestors. Peo­ple look for coun­tries that have some mea­sure of sta­bil­i­ty and ethics or what­ev­er when they are go­ing to do in­vest­ments. And clear­ly, we would not pass the test if we are be­ing se­ri­ous about at­tract­ing not just in­vestors, but the right type of in­vestor, be­cause we have al­ready cre­at­ed a bro­ken so­ci­ety.”

Hadad high­light­ed that cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es alike orig­i­nal­ly grav­i­tat­ed to­ward Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing her ini­tial tenure as Prime Min­is­ter be­cause she rep­re­sent­ed a gen­tler, more car­ing al­ter­na­tive af­ter years of hos­tile po­lit­i­cal di­a­logue.

“We need to get back to us cre­at­ing an en­vi­ron­ment of care and love. Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar would have rep­re­sent­ed that her first time around as Prime Min­is­ter, and that would have been one of the key points why she ac­tu­al­ly won this elec­tion.I think the na­tion felt abused and could not take any more of that over­pow­er­ing neg­a­tiv­i­ty in the last nine and a half years. There­fore, the ex­pec­ta­tion does have a lev­el of dis­ap­point­ment. Peo­ple are not go­ing to want to put their mon­ey in an­gry en­vi­ron­ments or neg­a­tive spaces,” she added.