Elec­tion sea­son is sil­ly sea­son. The re­al­i­ty of To­ba­go, eco­nom­ic and oth­er­wise, is a far cry from the fan­tasies be­ing ped­dled by both the PNM and PDP and so it is re­al­ly in­ter­est­ing to hear the can­di­dates on the po­lit­i­cal hus­tings as the mo­men­tum builds for THA Elec­tion Day on De­cem­ber 6. The past weeks have been quite an eye-open­er as the po­lit­i­cal promis­es keep rolling in.

First, we had PNM can­di­date for Bon Ac­cord/Crown Point Clarence Ja­cob com­ing un­der heavy crit­i­cism for claims re­gard­ing the dis­tri­b­u­tion of ‘hun­dreds’ of signed blank CCTP “food card” forms. Ja­cob al­so blamed PDP as­sem­bly­woman Zor­isha Hack­ett for al­leged­ly ap­prov­ing un­de­serv­ing per­sons for food cards. The mass dis­tri­b­u­tion of food cards and ham­pers dur­ing an elec­tion seems to have now be­come a nec­es­sary evil, es­pe­cial­ly in this time of a pan­dem­ic. If in­deed blank forms ap­prov­ing those food cards were signed, such should be re­port­ed to the Fraud Squad, im­me­di­ate­ly. The ac­count­abil­i­ty and man­age­ment of food cards as raised by the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port in 2019/20 re­mains pend­ing.

Of con­cern to the re­cip­i­ents of these cards and ham­pers is whether or not they will con­tin­ue to be ben­e­fi­cia­ries af­ter the elec­tions, re­gard­less of who wins. From my ex­pe­ri­ence as MP, it is eas­i­er to get food cards and ham­pers dur­ing elec­tion time and this is why it is seen as a ‘bribe’ com­ing from the gov­ern­ment of the day. Af­ter elec­tions, it is back to the same old bu­reau­cra­cy of de­lays and long pro­cess­ing times. Elec­tions loosen the purse.

PDP po­lit­i­cal leader Wat­son Duke has promised that THA em­ploy­ees will re­ceive an ex gra­tia pay­ment for Christ­mas if he wins on De­cem­ber 6th. He said they would find the mon­ey. He al­so promised $10 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly to every elec­toral dis­trict to deal with un­em­ploy­ment. This re­mind­ed me of the plan by the for­mer Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment, of which I was a part, where a $10 mil­lion con­stituen­cy fund was pro­posed by then Min­is­ter of Plan­ning Bhoe Tewarie and in­clud­ed in our Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Re­form Bill. This was a very good plan, since this fund would have helped with mi­nor in­fra­struc­tur­al projects in every con­stituen­cy. As such, it is a good plan from the PDP but with a strug­gling econ­o­my, it will be very hard to find $150 mil­lion for this un­em­ploy­ment fund.

To­ba­go PNM Coun­cil leader Tra­cy David­son-Ce­les­tine has promised 3,000 jobs, dis­tri­b­u­tion of 2,000 lots of land in four years and the cre­ation of a di­vi­sion of IT to as­sist the THA in go­ing pa­per­less. De­tails of the Pub­lic-Pri­vate Part­ner­ships to cre­ate these jobs are not in the pub­lic do­main ex­cept for the To­ba­go Mar­riott Project.

Chief Sec­re­tary An­cil Den­nis re­ceived $50 mil­lion three weeks be­fore the elec­tions to as­sist hote­liers and dis­placed work­ers. The ac­com­mo­da­tion sec­tor will re­ceive $15 mil­lion. Five mil­lion is ear­marked for small and medi­um busi­ness­es, $10 mil­lion to TTAL to be used for digi­ti­sa­tion of busi­ness­es in the sec­tor and the re­main­ing $20 mil­lion is for dis­placed work­ers with­in the tourism sec­tor who are to re­ceive a one-time grant of $5,000. All of this cash is to be dis­bursed just be­fore the De­cem­ber 6th elec­tions.

With a pop­u­la­tion of less than 70,000 and the THA em­ploy­ing 60% of the work­force with­in a con­tract­ed econ­o­my due to the pan­dem­ic, Moody’s In­vestors Ser­vice has giv­en the THA a neg­a­tive out­look rat­ing and long term rat­ing of Ba1, based on lim­it­ed eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, very low own-source rev­enue and weak­ness­es in re­port­ing of fi­nan­cial state­ments as chal­lenges to the THA’s cred­it pro­file. The THA has a $250 mil­lion over­draft which is be­ing used quite fre­quent­ly to bridge the gap be­tween cen­tral gov­ern­ment dis­burse­ments. In 2019, the Min­istry of Fi­nance gave the THA the green light to bor­row mon­ey, up to $300 mil­lion, for de­vel­op­men­tal projects. The prob­lem is that while they can now bor­row, their neg­a­tive cred­it rat­ing di­min­ish­es their pow­er to do so.

I have not heard any can­di­date from any of the par­ties con­test­ing the THA elec­tions se­ri­ous­ly speak about a more in­de­pen­dent To­ba­go. They have each ac­cused the oth­er of not want­i­ng it. Nei­ther par­ty has prop­er­ly pro­posed a plan for it though. David­son-Ce­les­tine has gone on record to ac­cuse Duke of want­i­ng se­ces­sion but not re­al­ly sup­port­ing in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment ei­ther.

The re­al­i­ty is that in a poll con­duct­ed by the Par­lia­ment, 70% of Trin­bag­o­ni­ans want To­ba­go to man­age and run its af­fairs and they want them to de­vel­op their econ­o­my to gen­er­ate its own rev­enues, to make their own laws in­ter alia while keep­ing the uni­tary state that is Trinidad and To­ba­go. Wat­son Duke’s dream of se­ces­sion is a fan­ta­sy now since it will take many long years to get there. What is pos­si­ble now is in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment. Hope­ful­ly, af­ter this elec­tion, the new THA will get se­ri­ous about re­al gov­er­nance and de­mand that the process for greater au­ton­o­my for To­ba­go be­gins in the Par­lia­ment with both Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ing the To­ba­go self-gov­ern­ment bills.

I have faith in my To­ba­go broth­ers and sis­ters. They know who will serve them best and they know how to dis­tin­guish be­tween re­al­i­ty and fan­ta­sy.