Fer­die Fer­reira

At the risk of of­fend­ing my fel­low Trin­bag­on­ian cit­i­zens of To­bag­on­ian ori­gin, I must ad­mit the al­most four-hour long bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion by the Hon Chief Sec­re­tary and Sec­re­tary for Fi­nance leaves me not on­ly a lit­tle baf­fled, but quite hon­est­ly, more amused than con­fused.

His $4 bil­lion pro­pos­al works out to be one hour talk for every bil­lion dol­lars re­quest­ed. With a pop­u­la­tion of 60,000-70,000 cit­i­zens, a rev­enue of $220 mil­lion, a par­ty leader, now Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary, Sec­re­tary Ex­tra­or­di­naire (a lux­u­ry few de­vel­oped, far less de­vel­op­ing coun­tries can af­ford), the Chief Sec­re­tary, with his over­whelm­ing ma­jor­i­ty in the House of As­sem­bly, in his am­bi­tious ef­fort to put, what in his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s opin­ion, are all the per­ceived wrongs, right, ap­pears to be ex­treme­ly des­per­ate to ac­cel­er­ate the ATM process with­out any se­ri­ous con­sid­er­a­tion for the na­tion­al bal­ance sheet and/or the con­se­quences of his ad­min­is­tra­tion’s gen­eros­i­ty at the ex­pense of the oth­er 1.4 mil­lion tax pay­ers, the na­tion­al rev­enue, now way be­low the na­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture, the econ­o­my, ben­e­fi­cia­ries of wel­fare and so­cial as­sis­tance, all de­pen­dent on gov­ern­ment’s deficit bud­get.

The Chief Sec­re­tary, still en­joy­ing his dou­ble hon­ey­moon, ap­pears to have in­vit­ed all To­bag­o­ni­ans in To­ba­go to share in the cel­e­bra­tions. Noth­ing is wrong with that once it is af­ford­able or at his own ex­pense. Noth­ing is wrong with putting his par­ty’s per­ceived wrongs right, as ex­pe­di­tious­ly as he may wish, to ini­ti­ate those per­ceived cor­rec­tions. But again, can Trinidad and To­ba­go af­ford his gen­er­ous pro­pos­als on a deficit bud­get that con­tin­ues to de­prive over 1 mil­lion cit­i­zens at the lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­el, fa­cil­i­ties that our To­bag­o­ni­ans are al­ready en­joy­ing?

Now don’t get me wrong, as a for­mer Ma­rine Supt in charge of the In­ter-Is­land Fer­ry Ser­vice, I know on­ly too well the prob­lems en­coun­tered by my fel­low Trin­bag­o­ni­ans of To­bag­on­ian ori­gin. I al­so know on­ly too well how Trin­bag­o­ni­ans of To­bag­on­ian ori­gin ben­e­fit from the al­most 2.5 bil­lion dol­lars they re­ceive an­nu­al­ly; how well they ben­e­fit from the strate­gic po­lit­i­cal po­si­tion they con­tin­ue to use to their po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage!

To date, not one sin­gle com­ment has emerged from the Op­po­si­tion bench­es, or from the gov­ern­ment led by a Trin­bag­on­ian of To­bag­on­ian ori­gin, on the Chief Sec­re­tary’s high­ly ques­tion­able fi­nan­cial de­ci­sions, not on­ly ap­prov­ing gen­er­ous hand­outs, but sig­nif­i­cant in­creas­es and oth­er so­cial ben­e­fits to gov­ern­ment em­ploy­ees and the pri­vate sec­tor on the is­land with­out any con­sid­er­a­tion for (1) source of rev­enue; (2) con­se­quen­tial ef­fect on the oth­er side of our twin-is­land Re­pub­lic, and (3) in­crease of rev­enue and pro­duc­tiv­i­ty on the is­land.

The Chief Sec­re­tary may be young and in­ex­pe­ri­enced, now in his mid-thir­ties, now as­sum­ing the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for fam­i­ly life, a trained pro­fes­sion­al, self-pro­claimed vic­tim of po­lit­i­cal vic­tim­i­sa­tion, per­fect­ly qual­i­fied to un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence be­tween rev­enue and ex­pen­di­ture and the con­se­quence, so elo­quent­ly and cor­rect­ly ex­pressed by em­i­nent Trin­bag­on­ian schol­ar of To­bag­on­ian ori­gin, Mr Vanus James: “So you ask your­self what are we do­ing here? This is about liv­ing way above our means and that is the de­f­i­n­i­tion of a failed econ­o­my”. News­day, Ju­ly 3, 2022.

The po­lit­i­cal dice is heav­i­ly loaded in favour of To­ba­go, not St George East, the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion, Ca­roni or Pe­nal/Debe Re­gion­al Coun­cils, yet not a word from the Cor­po­ra­tions on the Chief Sec­re­tary’s jour­ney in­to Utopia at the ex­pense of the rest of the na­tion.

As a for­mer prime min­is­ter once said, “Pol­i­tics re­al­ly has a moral­i­ty of its own”. Cham­pagne taste with mau­by pock­et! $4 bil­lion, plus the oth­er ar­eas of na­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture in To­ba­go!

To­ba­go and To­bag­o­ni­ans must not be de­prived of their fair share of the na­tion­al cake, but how do we jus­ti­fy giv­ing $4 bil­lion plus to 60,000-70,000 con­sumers out of a pop­u­la­tion of 1.4 mil­lion?

Re­gard­less of ge­o­graph­i­cal lo­ca­tion, some­thing is wrong here, and in the words of for­mer Prime Min­is­ter, George Cham­bers, and the cur­rent eco­nom­ic re­al­i­ties out­lined by Mr Vanus James, “This wrong must be put right”. “Mon­ey like man­go, it has a sea­son”.

I mean no of­fence to my fel­low Trin­bag­on­ian cit­i­zens of To­bag­on­ian ori­gin, as the say­ing goes, “Mr Far­ley and his ubiq­ui­tous rov­ing Am­bas­sador Ex­tra­or­di­naire are en­ti­tled to their ex­pec­ta­tions”, their Utopi­an am­bi­tions. But the facts speak for them­selves.