An­na-Lisa Paul

On Sep­tem­ber 7, 2015, the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) swept in­to of­fice on a plat­form of promis­es—chief of which was to re­duce crime and tack­le cor­rup­tion. And even as the PNM marked two-and-a-half years in of­fice last Wednes­day, the pub­lic con­tin­ue to cow­er in fear over the run­away crime sit­u­a­tion while hold­ing its breath to see Gov­ern­ment's promis­es ma­te­ri­alise.

Lo­cal ex­perts and mem­bers of the pub­lic alike have found the PNM's per­for­mance thus far to be dis­ap­point­ing.

Busi­ness op­er­a­tors have been lament­ing the de­clin­ing eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties as they strug­gle for for­eign ex­change in or­der to sur­vive. Some cit­i­zens have been pray­ing for low­er food prices and to hold on to their jobs, while oth­ers have been left to­tal­ly dis­ap­point­ed and dis­il­lu­sioned with the han­dling of the To­ba­go air and sea-bridge fi­as­co, which con­tin­ues to linger.

Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs said the PNM and by ex­ten­sion Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley had both earned a "D" (re­ferred to as Dis­ap­point­ment) for their per­for­mance.

Sur­vey­ing cer­tain sec­tors of so­ci­ety and the Gov­ern­ment's re­sponse to burn­ing is­sues such as crime, eco­nom­ic im­prove­ment, and un­em­ploy­ment, econ­o­mist In­dera Sage­wan-Al­li said there had been no sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments over 2017.

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James was more gen­er­ous in his pro­jec­tions as he ap­plaud­ed the Gov­ern­ment for be­ing able to achieve a "bal­ance". He award­ed them one point more than last year for over­all im­prove­ments, bring­ing their score to six out of ten—ten be­ing the high­est score. "I will give them a sev­en on an­ti-crime man­age­ment, a five on gov­er­nance, and six on the an­ti-cor­rup­tion thrust."

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath gave the Gov­ern­ment a rat­ing of four. "They've been in­ad­e­quate on the han­dling of crime, they're lack­ing on good gov­er­nance, and eco­nom­ic stag­na­tion con­tin­ues," he said.

For­mer pub­lic ser­vice head Regi­nald Du­mas said: "I have to move from the six I gave them last year to five, the qual­i­ty of per­for­mance has de­clined."

He added, "They've been in­ad­e­quate on ed­u­ca­tion, se­cu­ri­ty, for­eign af­fairs, tourism—es­pe­cial­ly re­gard­ing To­ba­go and trans­port is­sues, the en­vi­ron­ment, and con­duct of To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly gov­er­nance.

"They're hold­ing ground in en­er­gy is­sues. I give Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert points for ef­fort as he had a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion to han­dle—but they still have work to do. I would have pre­ferred if they spent more time lis­ten­ing to Ter­rence Far­rell (chair­man of the Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Ad­vi­so­ry Board (EDAB) and di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my in­stead of pay­ing lip ser­vice there."

—re­port­ing by Gail Alexan­der

Cab­i­net gets poor marks

Ac­cord­ing to Attzs, "when we talk about how a gov­ern­ment has per­formed, we gen­er­al­ly look at whether they have passed or failed."

"I can't go with pass be­cause I think there is not a pal­pa­ble sense in the coun­try that things have im­proved in any great mea­sure over the past three years the Gov­ern­ment has been in of­fice. A pass­ing grade would have been as a re­sult of a sense of im­prove­ment and ac­com­plish­ment, and I don't think there is any sense of ei­ther.

"I al­so don't think the Gov­ern­ment has failed in that the mea­sure of suc­cess that would have al­lowed Gov­ern­ment to make the kinds of im­prove­ments one would have ex­pect­ed to see would have been the avail­abil­i­ty of rev­enue, and this sim­ply is not avail­able in the quan­tum that we en­joyed on pre­vi­ous oc­ca­sions."

On its over­all per­for­mance, Sage­wan-Al­li said, "I don't think there has been any sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ment from last year to this year."

Dis­count­ing its first year in of­fice as "set­tling in," Sage­wan-Al­li said the sec­ond and third year was for sat­is­fy­ing "ex­pect­ed de­liv­er­ables."

Econ­o­my—bleak fu­ture ahead

Pre­dict­ing T&T was head­ing for an­oth­er deficit bud­get, Attzs said a sense of still­ness con­tin­ued to en­vel­op the lo­cal eco­nom­ic land­scape and was char­ac­terised by re­duced earn­ings and lit­tle rev­enue gen­er­a­tion.

Asked about Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance, she said, "There is a dis­ap­point­ment in the econ­o­my. There is a dis­ap­point­ment among the peo­ple of the coun­try that things are sim­ply not hap­pen­ing."

Attzs said while the cit­i­zen­ry was hap­py Gov­ern­ment had not moved to send home pub­lic ser­vants, "my con­cern is whether or not this is a re­al­is­tic com­mit­ment the Gov­ern­ment has made."

She said in the cur­rent eco­nom­ic cli­mate, the large pub­lic sec­tor wage bill re­mained the Gov­ern­ment's largest and most press­ing ex­pense.

"If the Gov­ern­ment is not earn­ing rev­enue, one has to won­der from where is the Gov­ern­ment go­ing to iden­ti­fy the re­sources to main­tain that large wage bill it is faced with."

James, mean­while, said T&T con­tin­ues to main­tain a firm po­si­tion al­though it is un­der-pro­duc­ing in the oil and gas sec­tor. He said this had en­abled pub­lic ser­vants such as teach­ers, fire of­fi­cers, and po­lice of­fi­cers to re­main em­ployed.

He said while larg­er de­vel­op­ments have not ma­te­ri­alised due to a lack of funds, small-scale de­vel­op­ments had be­gun.

James said, "The abil­i­ty to keep the econ­o­my go­ing, hav­ing re­gard to what Gov­ern­ment had ul­ti­mate­ly iden­ti­fied as the prob­lem, must be a plus for this Gov­ern­ment."

On the is­sue of di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, Sage­wan-Al­li said, "This re­mains all talk and no ac­tion."

De­clar­ing this could be ill-af­ford­ed at this time, she said, "This is one area where the Gov­ern­ment's voice should be heard loud­est be­cause the re­al is­sues of grow­ing un­em­ploy­ment and for­eign ex­change chal­lenges need to be ad­dressed in an ag­gres­sive man­ner."

Re­fer­ring to the res­ig­na­tion of Dr Far­rell as chair­man of the EDAB, Sage­wan-Al­li de­scribed it as a "se­ri­ous in­dict­ment" on the Gov­ern­ment's part.

Crime to get worse

An­tic­i­pat­ing that crime will con­tin­ue to wors­en, Attzs said the in­creas­ing mur­der rate was "in­dica­tive of a gen­er­al kind of un­ease in the econ­o­my, along with a change in morals and val­ues."

To be fair, Attzs point­ed out, Gov­ern­ment could not be held ac­count­able for the change in morals and val­ues.

"What they can be held ac­count­able for and what peo­ple are look­ing to the Gov­ern­ment for is the main­te­nance of law and or­der."

Attzs said when one looked at the holis­tic pic­ture, "you get a sense that not even that is hap­pen­ing."

Sage­wan-Al­li agreed that "crime is cer­tain­ly any­where but un­der con­trol."

"In fact, it has so wors­ened that I don't think there has been ever a time in T&T when the cit­i­zen­ry has felt so much un­der threat, so much fear and a sense of hope­less­ness in terms that this is go­ing to come to an end any time soon."

She said the con­tin­ued bungling of the process to elect a head of the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice was one in­di­ca­tor of the Gov­ern­ment's in­abil­i­ty to re­store the pop­u­la­tion's trust and in­still hope for a bet­ter fu­ture.

Ac­cord­ing to James, al­though in­creas­ing the fleet of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices and build­ing new po­lice sta­tions are tan­gi­ble ad­di­tions in the fight against crime "it is up to the in­sti­tu­tions that ex­ist for the man­age­ment of crime to act."

He com­mend­ed the TTPS for im­prove­ments in the de­tec­tion rate and their ef­forts to con­fis­cate il­le­gal arms and am­mu­ni­tion, as he said some­one had to be ul­ti­mate­ly ac­knowl­edged for this achieve­ment—whether it was through po­lice ef­forts or gov­ern­ment pol­i­cy.

Ed­u­ca­tion and health—No tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments

Say­ing that no tan­gi­ble im­prove­ments had been made since the PNM as­sumed of­fice in 2015, Attzs point­ed out that "there is an over­whelm­ing sense of dis­ap­point­ment."

Attzs said the sense of un­der-em­ploy­ment should not be con­nect­ed to the ad­just­ments which were in­tro­duced in­to the Gov­ern­ment As­sis­tance for Tu­ition Ex­pens­es (Gate) pro­gramme.

She said the fact that ter­tiary-lev­el grad­u­ates were be­ing forced to ac­cept jobs they are over-qual­i­fied for, could not be di­rect­ly linked to the changes in the Gate regime but to a lack of plan­ning and short-sight­ed­ness when the pro­gramme was first in­tro­duced.

Com­ment­ing briefly on the health sec­tor, Attzs said, "The peo­ple of T&T do not feel as if their lives are be­ing im­proved."

Sage­wan-Al­li, mean­while, said while health seemed to be mak­ing head­lines be­cause of drug short­ages and poor ser­vice, "this has trans­lat­ed in­to some se­ri­ous is­sues for the health sys­tem and we are not hear­ing any con­ver­sa­tions about na­tion­al health­care sys­tems."

In the area of ed­u­ca­tion, James said T&T had been do­ing well be­fore fi­nan­cial hard­ships forced Gov­ern­ment to ad­just the Gate pro­gramme. James not­ed that ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion was still ac­ces­si­ble but at a greater cost now.

James said the Gov­ern­ment had earned them­selves a nine in the area of ed­u­ca­tion.

Re­gard­ing health, James said the cit­i­zens con­tin­ued to ben­e­fit from var­i­ous ini­tia­tives. He award­ed Gov­ern­ment sev­en in this area.

Over­all per­for­mance—mid­dle class suf­fer­ing

Even as the pro­tec­tive ser­vices con­tin­ue to be con­front­ed by an­gry mobs over a va­ri­ety of is­sues, Attzs said that "on the heels of that un­civ­i­lized be­hav­iour," there is al­so the is­sue of the in­creas­ing cost in the stan­dard of liv­ing.

"You know there is hard­ship around the coun­try be­cause peo­ple are feel­ing it, notwith­stand­ing the fact they have jobs, but the dol­lar is cer­tain­ly not stretch­ing as they would like it to."

Sage­wan-Al­li said this was an area where Gov­ern­ment had def­i­nite­ly failed to make the grade.

"What the Gov­ern­ment seems to be very good at do­ing is tax­ing the pop­u­la­tion in or­der to raise mon­ey, which in fact has not raised the rev­enue it hoped for and has on­ly squeezed a cit­i­zen­ry es­pe­cial­ly the mid­dle class, and this is the one who you would want to free up the spend­ing pow­er in as they are the ones who will spend and stim­u­late growth in the econ­o­my."

Sage­wan-Al­li said the pub­lic al­so con­tin­ued to live in fear of in­creased util­i­ty rates.

She said the PNM's time thus far had been marked by "in­creased fear, in­creased wor­ry in terms of where the hope is go­ing to come from, and fear that I could lose my home and not be able to main­tain my fam­i­ly and chil­dren."

No re­sponse from Govt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al and Le­gal Af­fairs and Min­is­ter in the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert and Min­is­ter of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Franklin Khan did not re­spond to mes­sages from the Sun­day Guardian on the PNM’s per­for­mance.