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Tuesday, July 22, 2025

Wolves in sheep’s clothing?

by

1832 days ago
20200716

The id­iom “a wolf in sheep’s cloth­ing” is a warn­ing to be care­ful of an en­e­my who comes dis­guised as a friend. One should not trust any­one sim­ply be­cause they ap­pear friend­ly and kind, or al­ter­na­tive­ly, one must be­ware of those who pro­claim their in­tegri­ty and good stand­ing which might sim­ply be a cov­er for their mis­deeds. The sym­bol­ism of a wolf pre­tend­ing to be a sheep is al­so bib­li­cal. In Matthew 7:15-20 it is writ­ten “be­ware of false prophets which come to you in sheep’s cloth­ing but in­ward­ly they are raven­ing wolves”.

The metaphor is ap­pro­pri­ate to this elec­tion sea­son. Many will promise much to win of­fice, but those promis­es will com­fort fools. Sim­i­lar­ly, we ought to have learnt that be­cause peo­ple look like us, or be­long to our racial group­ing, does not mean that they will per­form in of­fice. Yet these are pre­cise­ly the tac­tics em­ployed. Fear of the “oth­er” is a pow­er­ful weapon as it can sus­pend ra­tio­nal­i­ty or cloud one’s judge­ment.

For the last five years we have heard the UNC was cor­rupt and spend­thrift or the PNM in­ad­e­quate. The one con­stant through­out this ad­min­is­tra­tion’s tenure has been its abil­i­ty to cel­e­brate fail­ure and pass it off as suc­cess. We have been re­mind­ed, re­peat­ed­ly, that we are in safe hands even though all the game chang­ers have failed and that the “suc­cess­ful­ly” rene­go­ti­at­ed gas con­tracts at high­er prices have led to plant clo­sures be­fore Covid 19. Or the econ­o­my turned around when it con­tin­ued to de­cline. It could have been worse in­stead of what could have been done to make it bet­ter?

This Sat­ur­day, it was said that a UNC gov­ern­ment would car­ry T&T to the IMF im­ply­ing that IMF type poli­cies would bring penury and hard­ship to cit­i­zens.

The TT econ­o­my was al­ready in sham­bles be­fore Covid 19 ar­rived. Pt Lisas plants were clos­ing and en­er­gy prices falling as econ­o­my de­clined for four years. Oil pro­duc­tion has con­tin­ued its down­ward slide falling by 27 per cent since 2015. Nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion de­clined in 2019 and av­er­age pro­duc­tion to May 2020 is -4.2 per cent low­er than 2019 with low­er en­er­gy prices. In­deed, Pro­fes­sor Theodore in his news­pa­per in­ter­view af­ter the ini­tial pre­sen­ta­tion of the Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee in May 2020, not­ed that it was in­evitable that T&T would have to adopt IMF type aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures af­ter the lock down. But aren’t Bar­ba­dos and Ja­maica in IMF pro­grammes and on the road to im­prove­ment?

Af­ter five years of OJT ex­pe­ri­ence, and with the ben­e­fit of the Re­cov­ery Com­mit­tee’s re­port in hand we should be hear­ing the plans to over­come the chal­lenges be­fore us. In­stead, the “nat­ur­al par­ty” of gov­ern­ment has be­gun its cam­paign fo­cused on the rearview mir­ror.

Speak­ing in Par­lia­ment on the Uff com­mis­sion of In­quiry in No­vem­ber 2009, Dr. Row­ley out­lined how cor­rup­tion works…” there are very few Min­is­ters who find them­selves in a sit­u­a­tion to in­flu­ence gov­ern­ment ex­pen­di­ture di­rect­ly… it is the func­tionar­ies in the sys­tem that do it. In Africa, Asia, and South Amer­i­ca, it is the func­tionar­ies in ca­hoots with their part­ners in gov­ern­ment…No Min­is­ter can sign a cheque.” And in T&T? Dr Row­ley con­tin­ued, fo­cus­ing on state en­ter­pris­es…” if we are not clear as to the role of the Min­is­ter in man­ag­ing these en­ter­pris­es, what we are go­ing to cre­ate is a sit­u­a­tion where the state en­ter­pris­es, spe­cial pur­pose or oth­er­wise, de­ter­mine the coun­try’s fu­ture. That is not what the elec­toral sys­tem was meant to de­liv­er.”

These are is­sues on which Dr. Row­ley staked his rep­u­ta­tion.

Eleven years lat­er, five of them as prime min­is­ter, not much has changed. The Pro­cure­ment Act is stymied, cam­paign fi­nance re­form an emp­ty promise. How is sys­temic cor­rup­tion be­ing ad­dressed? We have min­is­te­r­i­al com­mit­tees to buy fer­ries and ad­min­is­tra­tive er­rors to ex­plain HDC sweet-heart hous­ing deals? Are the Uff Com­mis­sion of In­quiry rec­om­men­da­tions be­ing fol­lowed? Or the award of con­tracts to gang­sters, or firms con­trolled by gang­sters, stopped? Where are the poli­cies and pro­grammes, as dis­tinct from hand­outs, to de­pressed com­mu­ni­ties? What ac­tion has been tak­en ei­ther to amend the Com­pa­nies Act or to de­vel­op a State En­ter­pris­es Act? Where is the lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form pro­gramme?

Cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions by all sides con­tin­ue, re­ly­ing on the court of pub­lic opin­ion for ad­ju­di­ca­tion. The in­sti­tu­tions are in de­cline; the Ju­di­cia­ry is over­bur­dened, the DPP un­der re­sourced, the PCA and the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion un­der­pow­ered, the pub­lic ser­vice in de­cline, crime un­abat­ed, whilst we cel­e­brate the open­ing of more build­ings, ev­i­dence of a mis­placed em­pha­sis on form over func­tion. Is it that po­lit­i­cal lead­ers fear that if the in­sti­tu­tions work, there will be no need for their in­ter­ven­tion (hous­ing?), ren­der­ing politi­cians pow­er­less?

T&T will not im­prove un­til cit­i­zens de­mand per­for­mance.


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