Has the Dr Kei­th Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion pre-col­lapsed in of­fice?

If so, what does it mean for the coun­try, its econ­o­my, and most im­por­tant­ly, the or­di­nary cit­i­zens of T&T?

It has been four weeks since I last wrote in this space and dur­ing that time, a lot of things have hap­pened that threat­en to have fun­da­men­tal short and long-term im­pacts on the peo­ple of T&T.

We have seen the ef­fects of cli­mate change, with sig­nif­i­cant flood­ing in many parts of the coun­try caused by more in­tense rain­fall and in­fra­struc­ture that is bro­ken and un­able to cope with it.

Thou­sands of cit­i­zens were ma­rooned in their homes, suf­fered the loss of or dam­age to prop­er­ty, were caught in traf­fic for hours try­ing to get home, and had to make al­ter­na­tive arrange­ments for their chil­dren who had to stay at home or those who re­main cut off from a ma­jor part of the coun­try, as is the case with the peo­ple of Ma­yaro.

Dur­ing the last four weeks, T&T al­so sur­passed its pre­vi­ous du­bi­ous record for mur­ders as the killing spree con­tin­ues.

Even as cit­i­zens kill one an­oth­er, we have a Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty who seems to think he can con­vince the pop­u­la­tion he is up to the job by try­ing to baf­fle us with plat­i­tudes, say­ing a lot and noth­ing at the same time, re­prieved to have been kept in the Cab­i­net by a Prime Min­is­ter who thinks mov­ing a Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty would not help and in­stead the so­lu­tion is for us to pray. We need fun­da­men­tal change!

Mean­while, the 70-plus-year-old Dr Row­ley has again been re-elect­ed as the leader of his po­lit­i­cal par­ty, as he fan­cies his chances against an­oth­er 70-plus po­lit­i­cal leader who avoids me­dia scruti­ny by rarely hold­ing news con­fer­ences and on­ly speak­ing at a Mon­day night fo­rum that doesn’t of­ten ad­vance the na­tion­al dis­course.

As if not to be out­done, there are po­lit­i­cal jhan­jhat in To­ba­go, with the Chief Sec­re­tary and his sup­port­ers leav­ing the po­lit­i­cal par­ty on whose tick­et they were elect­ed to the THA, and ap­pear to be play­ing out the old Dr Er­ic William’s adage that the al­ter­na­tive to the PNM is chaos and con­fu­sion.

Fi­nal­ly, the Gov­ern­ment, af­ter four years of ne­go­ti­a­tions, has signed an agree­ment to re­struc­ture At­lantic LNG. Again, it hides from the coun­try the de­tails of the re­struc­tur­ing.

There is, how­ev­er, a promise of a more eq­ui­table take for the Gov­ern­ment, but not a word on the re­al­i­ty that nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion is less than 75 per cent of in­stalled ca­pac­i­ty and there­fore the coun­try is leak­ing po­ten­tial rev­enue from low pro­duc­tion.

Yes, T&T is a coun­try that op­er­ates at break­neck speed and it is hard to keep up with it.

Even as our in­fra­struc­ture col­laps­es, we are in a time of boom­ing com­mod­i­ty prices and yet, with no boom in the econ­o­my, we keep hold­ing on­to hope that the en­er­gy sec­tor will save us, cit­i­zens kill one an­oth­er as busi­ness­es and in­di­vid­u­als re­coil in fear, and the Prime Min­is­ter re­mains silent, hid­den away from the pop­u­la­tion.

He spends much of his time clois­tered in To­ba­go with the rare ap­pear­ance at a ma­jor busi­ness or po­lit­i­cal event or in Par­lia­ment.

The PM’s si­lence is deaf­en­ing and his Min­is­ters have tak­en an ex­am­ple from their leader. Does any­one know a time­line for the re­con­struc­tion of parts of the Man­zanil­la/Ma­yaro Road?

Does any­one know what will hap­pen to the school­child­ren who use it? Does any­one know if the plan is to con­tin­ue build­ing box drains when cli­mate change per­haps calls for a dif­fer­ent en­gi­neer­ing ap­proach?

Does any­one know whether the Min­is­ter of Fi­nance will con­tin­ue to pre­tend that the econ­o­my has done well with a $1 bil­lion fis­cal sur­plus, when he owes con­trac­tors, busi­ness­es VAT re­funds, sub­si­dies to state en­ter­pris­es and de­lays pay­ing tax re­turns to in­di­vid­u­als?

Prime Min­is­ter, the coun­try is in trou­ble. We are run­ning out of time to trans­form this econ­o­my and if you had any doubt about it, just look at your two-bid rounds—both of them have been spec­tac­u­lar fail­ures.

As we en­ter the mer­ry sea­son, cit­i­zens can­not be drunk­en by a false sense of se­cu­ri­ty that the wine will not run out. The chal­lenge of trans­fers and sub­si­dies can­not be ig­nored.

The fail­ure to grasp the rel­a­tive­ly low-hang­ing fruits of tourism, in­clud­ing a change to the law to al­low for­eign com­pa­nies to own land in To­ba­go and in­vest in re­sorts and oth­er types of de­vel­op­ments, must be dealt with.

The lack of suf­fi­cient air­lift out of North Amer­i­ca and even with­in the re­gion must not be ig­nored in such an ex­er­cise.

There must be an all of the above strate­gies in which we seek to con­tin­ue the ef­fort to in­crease ex­ports of man­u­fac­tur­ing goods but look for high­er val­ue man­u­fac­tur­ing. That must mean a com­mit­ment to re­search and in­no­va­tion.

The Gov­ern­ment must com­mit and do what is nec­es­sary to in­crease the ef­fi­cien­cy at the ports and digi­tise the econ­o­my.

There must be a clear fo­cus and strat­e­gy for in­creas­ing oil and gas pro­duc­tion and im­por­tant­ly in­creas­ing drilling.

The Min­is­ter of Every­thing must fo­cus on his port­fo­lio be­cause, as was the case in Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions, he can point to very few tan­gi­ble suc­cess­es.

But as cit­i­zens, we must take a large part of the blame.

Pol­i­tics de­mand that we in­sist on more from our lead­ers out­side of the elec­tion pe­ri­od.

The coun­try ap­pears to have sim­ply shrug its shoul­ders in the kind of qui­et that usu­al­ly pre­cedes a wave of po­lit­i­cal dis­con­tent and change of the po­lit­i­cal elites. But that alone will not lead to the eco­nom­ic and so­cial trans­for­ma­tion need­ed.

I want to quote ex­ten­sive­ly from an ar­ti­cle writ­ten by Lloyd Best. It was writ­ten in 1995 and ti­tled No Par­ty to vote for.

It is as rel­e­vant to­day as it was in 1995 be­cause the body politic has not changed and un­less this is al­tered, the eco­nom­ic lim­i­ta­tions will re­main, ex­cept this time there will not be oil and gas to keep us from falling over the prover­bial precipice.

Best wrote: “Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans have no par­ty to vote for. That is our cri­sis. Some­how, we have to cre­ate one. That is our chal­lenge…What­ev­er the com­plex­i­ty or sim­plic­i­ty of the is­sue, they rou­tine­ly re­duce it to ‘race’ or ‘prej­u­dice’ against To­bag­o­ni­ans In­di­ans, Africans or women. They are aid­ed and abet­ted by many who ben­e­fit from the sta­tus quo, ed­u­ca­tors, ‘let­ter writ­ers, pub­lish­ers, pro­fes­sors, pun­dits, and many oth­er pro­fes­sion­als.’”

And yet it would be plain wrong, and al­so un­fair, to pro­ceed as if our ma­jor prob­lem is cyn­i­cism, cu­pid­i­ty, or cor­rup­tion on the part of the nu­mer­ous ben­e­fi­cia­ries of the po­lit­i­cal sta­tus quo.

Above all, it would be coun­ter­pro­duc­tive.

Not on­ly would it be point­less, but al­so ab­surd to pro­ceed as if the prob­lem were the ban­dit­ry and pira­cy that are every­where at large.

If every­body is a ban­dit or a pi­rate, then no­body is. The prob­lem is nei­ther pira­cy nor ban­dit­ry, nor is it the PNM cor­rup­tion, the facile for­mu­las the NAR tried to sell us in the 1986 cam­paign.

If cor­rup­tion was as wide­spread as ANR Robin­son, Karl Hud­son Philip, and Patrick Solomon said, and quite pos­si­bly it was, then cor­rup­tion could on­ly have been a symp­tom of a dis­or­der of a very dif­fer­ent kind.

It is one thing to see that Patrick Man­ning, Ken Val­ley, Lenny Saith, along with Bas­deo Pan­day, and Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, are now com­plete­ly dis­cred­it­ed fig­ures, much as Mr Robin­son be­came af­ter the NAR, and as Dr Williams was af­ter the Black Pow­er erup­tion against the black peo­ple par­ty.

The dis­cred­it is re­al, en­dur­ing and in­stru­men­tal. In­deed, it is ir­re­versible, but it is sim­ply not the whole sto­ry or the main sto­ry.

If all these lead­ers are re­peat­ed­ly re-elect­ed by the pop­u­la­tion, fall rit­u­al­ly in­to dis­cred­it, then the prob­lem can­not be dis­cred­it­ed. What we are up against is a prob­lem of the sys­tem, which does not ex­on­er­ate the per­son­al­i­ties, but serves to fo­cus our at­ten­tion on what our cur­rent in­ter­ven­tion must be.”

As we come to the end of the year as well I want to thank all of you who have giv­en me the op­por­tu­ni­ty to share my thoughts over the last year.

I am for­ev­er in­debt­ed. It is you the read­ers who make all of the dif­fer­ence and it is you who must en­sure we move away from the au­topi­lot we are on as a coun­try.