SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI

Se­nior In­ves­tiga­tive Re­porter

shal­iza.has­sanali@guardian.co.tt

For­mer plan­ning, eco­nom­ic and so­cial re­struc­tur­ing min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie is deny­ing claims that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment stole the late Patrick Man­ning’s Vi­sion 2020 plan and re­brand­ed it as their own.

On Thurs­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar un­veiled an am­bi­tious Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print, promis­ing 50,919 jobs through a wave of in­fra­struc­ture projects.

While the Prime Min­is­ter de­clared that T&T was “open for busi­ness,” Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jear­lean John added that, be­yond job cre­ation, the projects would make the coun­try “un­recog­nis­able.”

The un­veil­ing sparked out­rage from San Fer­nan­do East MP Bri­an Man­ning, who wrote on Face­book on Fri­day:

“The Re­turn of Vi­sion 2020. The same plan they crit­i­cised Patrick Man­ning for is the same plan they dust off and bring back. They owe Patrick Man­ning an apol­o­gy. This is yet an­oth­er ex­am­ple of bla­tant hypocrisy.”

Man­ning, a for­mer prime min­is­ter and po­lit­i­cal leader of the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM), died in 2016. His son ac­cused the UNC of repli­cat­ing his fa­ther’s Vi­sion 2020 plan, de­scrib­ing their new ini­tia­tive as a “cut and paste” ver­sion of the orig­i­nal.

John al­so dis­missed Man­ning’s ac­cu­sa­tions.

Re­spond­ing to Man­ning’s post, Tewarie said he could un­der­stand “why a son would want to pro­tect his fa­ther’s lega­cy.” How­ev­er, he added that in a small coun­try like Trinidad and To­ba­go, it was nat­ur­al that sim­i­lar ideas might re-emerge from one ad­min­is­tra­tion to an­oth­er.

“That does not mean any­body’s ideas are stolen. It means that a project might make sense,” Tewarie said in de­fence of the UNC.

Man­ning main­tained that while he was not against the UNC’s projects, many of the pro­pos­als were un­re­al­is­tic.

“It’s a pie in the sky. It’s the Prime Min­is­ter’s fever dream. It’s a fan­ta­sy,” he said.

He de­scribed as “most egre­gious” the UNC’s crit­i­cism of his fa­ther’s Port-of-Spain Wa­ter­front Project, which trans­formed the cap­i­tal’s land­scape.

“They said Man­ning was en­gag­ing in van­i­ty projects—on­ly build­ing tall build­ings in town—yet those same projects have saved the coun­try hun­dreds of mil­lions of dol­lars in rental fees. They were op­posed to all of that.”

Man­ning re­called that one of his fa­ther’s goals was to de­vel­op the Tamana In­Tech Park in­to a tech­nol­o­gy hub. In­stead, the UNC now pro­pos­es to build a Tamana Cen­tre for Jus­tice, hous­ing cour­t­hous­es, a prison, and a re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion cen­tre.

“To turn it in­to a prison cam­pus is ab­solute­ly ridicu­lous,” Man­ning said. “It be­trays the peo­ple of east Trinidad and To­ba­go, who were promised high-pay­ing jobs if the tech hub idea had been im­ple­ment­ed.”

He al­so ac­cused the UNC of de­stroy­ing copies of Vi­sion 2020 af­ter tak­ing of­fice in 2010. In 2022, then-health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh claimed that Vi­sion 2020 doc­u­ments were “dumped in the La Basse” by the in­com­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion—an act he said hin­dered na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.

Asked whether he be­lieved his fa­ther would be “rolling in his grave” over the cur­rent con­tro­ver­sy, Man­ning replied:

“No. I think he is smil­ing in heav­en be­cause he al­ways knew his plan was the best.”

A promise for de­vel­op­ment

Tewarie said that be­fore the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship came to of­fice in 2010, its man­i­festo was based on sev­en de­vel­op­ment pil­lars—ad­dress­ing crime and law, agri­cul­ture, ed­u­ca­tion, food se­cu­ri­ty, health care, eco­nom­ic growth, job cre­ation, com­pet­i­tive­ness, in­no­va­tion, pover­ty re­duc­tion, and hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment.

The ad­min­is­tra­tion al­so laid in Par­lia­ment a Medi­um-Term Pol­i­cy Frame­work (MTPF) for 2011–2014.

“It was a dif­fer­ent time with dif­fer­ent needs,” Tewarie said, not­ing that the gov­ern­ment had com­mis­sioned a port study rec­om­mend­ing a deep­wa­ter har­bour and de­vel­oped plans for East Port-of-Spain and oth­er eco­nom­ic growth poles.

He added that the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship al­so pur­sued projects such as dry­dock­ing fa­cil­i­ties, a med­ical tourism hos­pi­tal, a sus­tain­able smart city, and pub­lic-pri­vate de­vel­op­ment on the Ch­aguara­mas penin­su­la.

“Bids for In­vaders Bay were award­ed,” he re­called, but said the ad­min­is­tra­tion lost the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion be­fore these projects could be ex­e­cut­ed.

Tewarie de­scribed Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion Blue­print as “a promise of phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture de­vel­op­ment and jobs that has been in the mak­ing for over a decade.”

“Our coun­try needs a boost like this,” he said. “It’s am­bi­tious over ten years, but some of it can be achieved.”

He not­ed that the suc­cess of the plan de­pends on in­vestor con­fi­dence.

“It all boils down to how the gov­ern­ment gen­er­ates in­ter­na­tion­al busi­ness and fi­nan­cial con­fi­dence, and whether in­vestors can get good re­turns on their in­vest­ments.”

Tewarie added that se­cu­ri­ty and gov­er­nance re­main cru­cial.

“It is im­por­tant for guns, drugs, mur­ders, home in­va­sions, and oth­er crimes to be brought un­der con­trol with­out a state of emer­gency. The gov­ern­ment must al­so recog­nise that there are things be­yond in­fra­struc­ture re­quired for sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment—some of these are in­tan­gi­ble. We must not lose sight of that.”

BOX: RE­VI­TAL­I­SA­TION PROJECTS

De­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress at the launch, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called for col­lab­o­ra­tion among in­ter­na­tion­al or­gan­i­sa­tions, pri­vate sec­tor firms, and the pub­lic ser­vice as gov­ern­ment em­barks on ma­jor up­grades in 12 lo­ca­tions across the coun­try.

Pro­posed ar­eas for de­vel­op­ment in­clude Port-of-Spain, San Fer­nan­do, Ch­agua­nas, Car­rera Is­land, Tamana, Mt Hope, Ce­dros, and Tetron.

Planned projects in­clude:

Plaza San Car­los in San Fer­nan­do

In­fin­i­ty Eight Tow­ers in Port-of-Spain

Sea Lots In­dus­tri­al Park

Tamana Jus­tice Cam­pus

Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Cam­pus in Mt Hope

Plans are al­so in the pipeline to build 2,000 lux­u­ry res­i­dences in the cap­i­tal city.

BOX: MAN­NING’S VI­SION 2020

Patrick Man­ning’s Vi­sion 2020 Op­er­a­tional Plan (2007–2010) was de­vel­oped to help T&T achieve spe­cif­ic na­tion­al tar­gets, based on five de­vel­op­men­tal pil­lars:

De­vel­op­ing in­no­v­a­tive peo­ple

Nur­tur­ing a car­ing so­ci­ety

En­abling com­pet­i­tive busi­ness

In­vest­ing in sound in­fra­struc­ture and the en­vi­ron­ment

Pro­mot­ing ef­fec­tive gov­ern­ment

To de­vel­op in­no­v­a­tive peo­ple, Man­ning en­vi­sioned cre­at­ing a high­ly skilled work­force through in­sti­tu­tions such as the Uni­ver­si­ty of T&T, the Com­mu­ni­ty Col­lege of T&T, and the Tamana In­Tech Park.

He sought to nur­ture a car­ing so­ci­ety through ac­cel­er­at­ed hous­ing con­struc­tion, mod­ernised health care tech­nol­o­gy, and ex­pand­ed so­cial ser­vices.

To en­able com­pet­i­tive busi­ness, he aimed to strength­en the non-en­er­gy sec­tor, ex­pand en­er­gy op­por­tu­ni­ties, and es­tab­lish 17 large farms to im­prove food se­cu­ri­ty.

Man­ning’s in­fra­struc­ture vi­sion in­clud­ed ex­pand­ing the road net­work and re­lo­cat­ing the Port of Port-of-Spain to Sea Lots to fa­cil­i­tate wa­ter­front de­vel­op­ment and the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre.

To pro­mote ef­fec­tive gov­er­nance, he planned to strength­en the le­gal frame­work, ex­pand ICT us­age, and im­ple­ment ini­tia­tives to re­duce crime and vi­o­lence.

How­ev­er, Vi­sion 2020 was aban­doned pre­ma­ture­ly af­ter Man­ning called a snap elec­tion in May 2010, which the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment lost to the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship—ush­er­ing in a new de­vel­op­ment agen­da.