SHAL­IZ A HAS­SANALI

Se­nior Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

As the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) her­alds its eighth year in of­fice to­day, they’ve come in for crit­i­cism by po­lit­i­cal an­a­lysts for fail­ing to con­nect with cit­i­zens.

Rat­ing the par­ty’s per­for­mance in the last year, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Shane Mo­hammed rat­ed the PNM four out of ten, stat­ing there is much room for im­prove­ment re­gard­ing the gov­er­nance of the coun­try.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James said many peo­ple in the coun­try were un­hap­py with the par­ty’s achieve­ments which in­clud­ed their own PNM sup­port­ers.

How­ev­er, PNM’s PRO Faris Al-Rawi, while ad­mit­ting that the par­ty has been grap­pling with mur­ders and crime, rat­ed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s over­all per­for­mance as “ex­cel­lent.”

He al­so gave Row­ley’s Cab­i­net an “eight out of ten” mark for their over­all work.

The rat­ings come ahead of Mon­day’s Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion.

To­day the PNM marks the third an­niver­sary of its sec­ond term un­der Row­ley.

It’s the par­ty’s eighth year in of­fice.

On Au­gust 10, 2020, the PNM re-as­sumed of­fice af­ter they cap­tured 22 of the 41 seats in the gen­er­al elec­tion, top­pling their main ri­val the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) which se­cured 19 seats.

Mo­hammed: The PNM is strug­gling

Cit­ing home in­va­sions, mur­ders, armed rob­beries, poor wa­ter sup­ply, de­plorable roads, un­em­ploy­ment, in­ad­e­quate hous­ing and ris­ing cost of liv­ing as some of the ma­jor is­sues that con­tin­ue to im­pact the lives of cit­i­zens, Mo­hammed said this has led to the Gov­ern­ment be­com­ing “high­ly un­pop­u­lar” dur­ing their sec­ond term.

Mo­hammed iden­ti­fied mur­ders and home in­va­sions as the Gov­ern­ment’s biggest headache, stat­ing that “they can’t seem to get a firm grip on.”

As the mur­der rate ap­proach­es 350, Mo­hammed said cit­i­zens have been un­der siege by the crim­i­nal el­e­ments and the PNM seems help­less at stop­ping the il­le­gal guns and am­mu­ni­tion from en­ter­ing our porous bor­ders.

“Don’t tell me about the an­ti-gang and bail amend­ment act and all of that. John Pub­lic does not un­der­stand that. They want to see ac­tion... a polic­ing strat­e­gy and an in­crease in crime de­tec­tion.”

Months af­ter the Gov­ern­ment held its two-day re­gion­al crime sym­po­sium, Mo­hammed said we are yet to see any re­sults.

“This is not a Gov­ern­ment of swift im­ple­men­ta­tion.”

Mo­hammed said Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Er­la Hare­wood-Christo­pher has to get out of the “co­coon she is in” and en­gage the me­dia in a mean­ing­ful way while he rec­om­mend­ed that she starts hit­ting the ground to build con­fi­dence in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

An­oth­er thorn in the side for mo­torists and com­mu­ni­ties was bad roads.

“The com­plaints have been com­ing fast and fu­ri­ous and even though we are at the height of an elec­tion, the road con­di­tions have not been im­prov­ing... all we are see­ing is patch­ing here and there.”

Mo­hammed: Row­ley can’t take con­struc­tive crit­i­cism

While Mo­hammed cred­it­ed Row­ley for be­ing strong-willed and tak­ing con­trol of his Cab­i­net, he said he is very fick­le when it comes to peo­ple giv­ing con­struc­tive crit­i­cism to his par­ty.

“Any­body who does not say some­thing pos­i­tive about his ad­min­is­tra­tion is deemed to be an en­e­my of the PNM.”

Mo­hammed said the Gov­ern­ment is not held to ac­count by the peo­ple be­cause of the Op­po­si­tion’s fail­ure to ex­e­cute its roles and func­tions.

Af­ter three years in their sec­ond term, Mo­hammed the PNM still lacks di­a­logue with its cit­i­zens.

“I con­tin­ue to say that the PNM is in­con­sis­tent in po­lit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Mo­hammed gave the par­ty a D grade for this short­com­ing.

One strong point the PNM con­tin­ues to main­tain is its po­lit­i­cal struc­ture.

“But when it comes to gov­er­nance the PNM is strug­gling. It is falling short in its per­for­mance rat­ing.”

To Mo­hammed, the PNM’s biggest faux pas in the last year is not seek­ing the in­ter­est of the peo­ple in terms of help­ing to im­prove the lives of the poor and un­em­ployed.

“Peo­ple are suf­fer­ing. Out­side banks and su­per­mar­kets, we are notic­ing an in­crease in moth­ers with chil­dren beg­ging for help. It shows that there is a so­cial prob­lem in our coun­try which is not be­ing ad­dressed.”

Mo­hammed said in Row­ley’s eight years of gov­er­nance his ag­gres­sive tone has been a turn-off for many cit­i­zens.

“Not every­thing has to have the tone of a big stick ap­proach. Be more com­pas­sion­ate and show em­pa­thy. Be the big­ger per­son. Not every­thing is po­lit­i­cal and PNM-cen­tric. You gov­ern the whole of T&T. I would say to my Prime Min­is­ter there is room for im­prove­ment.”

How has the PNM per­formed?

James said this was a dif­fi­cult ques­tion to an­swer.

“There are a lot of things the elec­torate are not sat­is­fied with.”

He iden­ti­fied poor main­te­nance of in­fra­struc­ture, de­plorable roads, and peo­ple’s cries or a reg­u­lar sup­ply of wa­ter that needs to be ad­dressed.

“There is much dis­sat­is­fac­tion in the coun­try, so far, as I can glean with the progress and de­vel­op­ment strate­gies of the Gov­ern­ment. There are peo­ple in the PNM con­stituen­cy who are less than im­pressed by how the gov­ern­ment is pro­vid­ing for them. There are rum­blings and mum­blings at the lev­el of the peo­ple...and at a lev­el of even the sup­port­ers.”

James: Row­ley’s fa­vor­a­bil­i­ty has de­clined

James said peo­ple have long giv­en up based on what they have been see­ing.

Touch­ing on the pro­posed prop­er­ty tax, James is still un­clear to the pop­u­la­tion “whether the tax­es that they are go­ing to col­lect will be suf­fi­cient to do the work that they see needs to be done.”

Like Mo­hammed, James said the Gov­ern­ment has not been able “to re­duce crime to lev­els that would make the pub­lic safe.”

He said every year sec­ondary and ter­tiary-lev­el stu­dents come out of the schools with­out em­ploy­able skills and many are at­tract­ed to crime and gangs.

“The Gov­ern­ment has done very lit­tle to mit­i­gate that kind of sit­u­a­tion.”

Touch­ing on crime, James could not say if Hinds is pre­sid­ing over a state of af­fairs where “he can boast and say that we are do­ing very well. Not at all.”

Opt­ing not to rate or grade the PNM’s per­for­mance in the last year, James said Row­ley seems to be in con­trol of his Cab­i­net.

“No­body acts out of step.”

Look­ing around, James said he has not seen any project be­ing un­der­tak­en by the Gov­ern­ment that ex­cites him.

Asked if the dis­con­tent will be demon­strat­ed on Au­gust 14 when vot­ers go to the polls, James said he has no ev­i­dence to sup­port this “ex­cept to say that I know that there are die-hards who are un­hap­py with the Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance.”

How­ev­er, he said peo­ple can be dis­sat­is­fied and still vote for the par­ty.

“Over the last year, I can’t say for my­self that I have seen any­thing that would re­al­ly rec­om­mend a good grade. I think they could have done far bet­ter. And the on­ly way to do far bet­ter is to talk with the peo­ple for the ad­vance­ment of gov­er­nance in the coun­try.”

James said there is a sep­a­ra­tion be­tween those who lead and those who fol­low.

Attzs: Peo­ple be­gin­ning to feel the pinch

Econ­o­mist Dr Mar­lene Attzs said the PNM as­sumed of­fice in 2015 at a time when there was a de­cline in oil and gas pro­duc­tion as well as its prices.

The econ­o­my al­so came to a halt when the pan­dem­ic struck in 2020 forc­ing the Gov­ern­ment to make some ad­just­ments.

Fast for­ward to 2023, Attzs said the chal­lenges over the last eight years for the PNM have been rel­a­tive­ly the same.

“The Gov­ern­ment has been faced with in­ter­na­tion­al in­fla­tion. This has com­pound­ed the sense of ur­gency in how the Gov­ern­ment man­ages its af­fairs.”

Attzs ad­mit­ted that it has been a fi­nan­cial chal­lenge for the Gov­ern­ment while peo­ple have been feel­ing the pinch and be­com­ing weary.

Mov­ing for­ward, Attzs sug­gest­ed that the Gov­ern­ment do some re­cal­i­bra­tion with the en­er­gy sec­tor and sup­port­ing in­dus­tries.

Attzs said for years the coun­try has been fed a di­et that was based on the earn­ings of the en­er­gy in­dus­try ,which we have to tran­si­tion away from.

“It is go­ing to be chal­leng­ing days ahead and it is go­ing to re­quire all of us to un­der­stand where we are.”

Al-Rawi: We can im­prove on our com­mu­ni­ca­tion

Al-Rawi felt the PNM has per­formed cred­i­bly in the last eight years.

The Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter said the Gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance was stymied for more than two years be­cause of COVID while they lost bil­lions of dol­lars in rev­enue.

He ad­mit­ted that peo­ple are grow­ing frus­trat­ed as they want faster job op­por­tu­ni­ties and ser­vices while the Gov­ern­ment has been “grap­pling with is­sues of crime and se­cu­ri­ty and peo­ple are not feel­ing safe.”

Al-Rawi said the Gov­ern­ment was be­ing hin­dered in fight­ing crime be­cause “there are laws we want to use that we have been pro­hib­it­ed from pass­ing” be­cause of the UNC.

The for­mer AG iden­ti­fied not hav­ing a par­lia­men­tary ma­jor­i­ty as a weak­ness for the PNM to pass laws.

The oth­er, he said, was a lack of com­mu­ni­ca­tion which he promised to im­prove as PRO.

“I think we can im­prove on our com­mu­ni­ca­tion.”

Al- Rawi ad­mit­ted that there are too many “work­ing poor or peo­ple out­side of em­ploy­ment,” while the poor state of the roads has been frus­trat­ing for mo­torists.

Com­par­ing the road con­di­tion last year to this year, Al-Rawi said they are far bet­ter.

Dur­ing COVID, the roads, he said, de­te­ri­o­rat­ed.

“We could have fixed the road but just don’t pay pub­lic ser­vants.”

Rat­ing the PM’s per­for­mance “as ex­cel­lent,” and giv­ing Cab­i­net an “eight out of ten” Al-Rawi said, whether those de­ci­sions are “ac­cept­ed well is an­oth­er equa­tion.”

He said how peo­ple see that it could be from a “three to a six...if you are lucky. I think Trinidad’s best days are ahead. I think we per­formed a lot of things very well. I ac­cept that that would not yet be ap­pre­ci­at­ed. There­fore the re­sult fac­tor would not be seen so you would get low marks on the re­sult side. But I know the re­sult is com­ing.”

Side­bar

Mo­hammed’s rat­ing of some min­is­ters

Dr Kei­th Row­ley-4

Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Faris Al-Rawi-5

En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young-0

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert-6

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Fitzger­ald Hinds-0

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour -3

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les-5

So­cial De­vel­op­ment and Fam­i­ly Ser­vices Don­na Cox-6

Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter Dr Nyan Gads­by-Dol­ly-8

Min­is­ter of For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Dr Amery Browne-10

Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Pen­ne­lope Beck­les-6

Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Camille Robin­son Reg­is-8

Sport Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe-4

Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh-2

Min­is­ter of Tourism, Cul­ture and the Arts Ran­dall Mitchell-6

Trade and In­dus­try Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon-5

Agri­cul­ture Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein- 7

Labour Min­is­ter Stephen Mc Clashie-4