An­tho­ny Wil­son

There were many re­spons­es to the BG View col­umn of De­cem­ber 17 head­lined "Has the Gov­ern­ment wast­ed mon­ey?" In that piece, I ar­gued that a Gov­ern­ment that had spent about 47 per cent of the $255 bil­lion that it col­lect­ed be­tween 2001 and 2009 on sub­si­dies and trans­fers could not be guilty of squan­der­ma­nia and wastage. That the sub­si­dies were spent mak­ing life eas­i­er for the cit­i­zens of the coun­try and the trans­fers were main­ly al­lo­ca­tions to var­i­ous gov­ern­ment sav­ings ac­counts. I thought it to be a use­ful piece of re­search and, there­fore, at the end of the piece, I asked how would read­ers have al­lo­cat­ed the $255.9 bil­lion dif­fer­ent­ly and in­vit­ed re­spons­es that would "raise the lev­el of the dis­course on this is­sue."

Giv­en the mood of the coun­try–as ex­pressed in let­ters to the ed­i­tor, calls to ra­dio and tele­vi­sion talk­shows, en­tries to news­pa­per blogs and in­for­mal dis­cus­sions held in pri­vate homes, lim­ing places and else­where through­out the coun­try–it was not at all sur­pris­ing that most of the com­ments were neg­a­tive and some were hos­tile. The main cri­tique of the BG View, and the per­for­mance of the Gov­ern­ment be­tween 2001 and 2009, was that while it iden­ti­fied how the mon­ey was spent in broad terms, there was no at­tempt made to an­a­lyze how that ex­pen­di­ture trans­lat­ed in­to an im­prove­ment in the wel­fare of the pop­u­la­tion. Many who com­ment­ed on the BG View were al­so crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment's pri­or­i­ties and the se­quenc­ing of its cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture.

For ex­am­ple, one Pa­tri­cia Smart wrote: "For all the mon­ey that has been ex­pend­ed, un­til I see bet­ter roads, health­care, wa­ter, bet­ter se­cu­ri­ty....I re­al­ly don't care which gov­ern­ment has spent more mon­ey. "This is not about whether UNC or PNM can spend more, it is about whether or not the every­day liv­ing con­di­tions of the cit­i­zens are be­ing im­proved and on that note the gov­ern­ment gets a big fat F."�An­oth­er cor­re­spon­dent, who gave his name as Robin Mon­tano, made a sim­i­lar com­ment ar­gu­ing that the coun­try's ed­u­ca­tion and health­care were "aw­ful and in­ad­e­quate," that the coun­try's in­fra­struc­ture, such as its roads and wa­ter was in­ad­e­quate and that the fo­cus of T&T's cap­i­tal ex­pen­di­ture dur­ing the boom pe­ri­od should have been on up­grad­ing ed­u­ca­tion, health and se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices be­fore the con­struc­tion of the tall build­ings and the prime min­is­te­r­i­al palace.

A sur­pris­ing num­ber of peo­ple men­tioned the ex­pen­di­ture of $2 mil­lion on the na­tion­al flag and the seem­ing­ly un­lim­it­ed ex­pen­di­ture on the Tarou­ba sport­ing fa­cil­i­ty. One e-mail cor­re­spon­dent ques­tioned whether the peo­ple of T&T re­ceived val­ue/re­turns as a re­sult of the Gov­ern­ment's $120 bil­lion ex­pen­di­ture. "We must be able to de­ter­mine if the de­sired im­pact was achieved. If not, we have no choice but to con­clude that there was no re­al de­sire to have any pos­i­tive im­pact but rather these ex­pen­di­tures were sim­ply geared to­wards cor­rup­tion and keep­ing the par­ty in pow­er." On the Guardian blog, a com­men­ta­tor by the name of trin­i­ty wrote: "Would it have been bet­ter to spend the mon­ey on its cit­i­zens? Wa­ter, roads, hos­pi­tals, bol­ster our sea shore­lines/in­ter-tidal re­gion from ero­sion. Get agri­cul­ture go­ing in a big way. Build an­oth­er cou­ple dams. Get the Gov­ern­ment ser­vices up and run­ning on­line–you read all the peren­ni­al griev­ances of birth cer­tifi­cates, dri­vers li­cences, pass­ports?"

A ref­er­ence was made to the BG View analy­sis, by a com­men­ta­tor in an­oth­er news­pa­per, as be­ing the work of a "par­ty-favour­ing ed­i­tor." Grant­ed, ri­val ed­i­tors have lat­i­tude, and so one as­sumes he was re­fer­ring to par­ty of the po­lit­i­cal kind and not to an all-in­clu­sive. But one is nev­er sure. There were very few e-mails sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment's ex­pen­di­ture pat­tern but the col­umn was re­ferred to on sev­er­al oc­ca­sions by min­is­ters dur­ing the de­bate last month on the pro­posed re­forms to the prop­er­ty tax leg­is­la­tion. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Karen Tesheira is re­port­ed to have said: "We have all seen from the ar­ti­cle that An­tho­ny Wil­son has be­come a celebri­ty, at least in this de­bate.

Why it is a good ar­ti­cle is be­cause it is well re­searched. I know you do not find it an at­trac­tive ar­gu­ment, Mem­ber for Oropouche East but it is well re­searched and es­sen­tial­ly the ar­ti­cle asks: Has the Gov­ern­ment wast­ed mon­ey? And ba­si­cal­ly he showed how much mon­ey the Gov­ern­ment had raised over the years that were ex­pend­ed on sub­si­dies and trans­fers and it is very im­pres­sive." To re­spond to some of the crit­ics, I find it dif­fi­cult to ac­cept that the Gov­ern­ment could have spent $120 bil­lion on trans­fers and pro­vid­ing sub­si­dies aimed at im­prov­ing the qual­i­ty of life of cit­i­zens and that there would be peo­ple who ques­tion the im­pact of that ex­pen­di­ture on the av­er­age cit­i­zen. When the State spends hun­dreds of mil­lion of dol­lars on CDAP, are the ben­e­fi­cia­ries those who are liv­ing off the fat of the land or are the ben­e­fi­cia­ries the av­er­age pay cheque-to-pay cheque cit­i­zen who is able to ac­cess free of charge med­ica­tion for di­a­betes, hy­per­ten­sion, glau­co­ma and dozens of oth­er ail­ments?

When the State spends bil­lions con­struct­ing heav­i­ly sub­sidised hous­es through­out the coun­try and of­fers them to cit­i­zens at heav­i­ly sub­sidised mort­gage in­ter­est rates, are the ben­e­fi­cia­ries for­eign­ers or cit­i­zens who might not have been able to af­ford to buy their own home oth­er­wise? Like­wise, who ben­e­fits when the State spends bil­lions ex­pand­ing the num­ber of places avail­able at the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies for cit­i­zens of this coun­try, bil­lions more es­tab­lish­ing a new uni­ver­si­ty and yet more bil­lions elim­i­nat­ing tu­ition fees from all ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion? Is it im­pos­si­ble to con­clude that some par­ents who oth­er­wise might have had to pay to send their chil­dren to uni­ver­si­ty have ben­e­fit­ted? Which groups of peo­ple in this coun­try have made the most of the op­por­tu­ni­ty pro­vid­ed by the State elim­i­nat­ing tu­ition fees from all ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion? And are there still some peo­ple who doubt that ed­u­ca­tion is the key to so­cial mo­bil­i­ty in coun­tries like ours?

Is there no one in this coun­try whose qual­i­ty of life has im­proved as a re­sult of sub­sidised hous­ing, free med­ica­tion and free ed­u­ca­tion?

Not even one fam­i­ly? What is re­quired in this de­bate and in this coun­try is some bal­ance:

�2 Yes the Gov­ern­ment has wast­ed mon­ey (which gov­ern­ment in the world over the 3,000 years of civil­i­sa­tion has been able to ac­count for the val­ue pro­vid­ed by every cent col­lect­ed).

�2 Yes, there are like­ly to have been in­stances of cor­rup­tion in the ad­min­is­tra­tion;

n Yes, the Gov­ern­ment may have tried to do too many things at the same time, there­by stretch­ing the ca­pac­i­ty of the coun­try;

�2 We can even have a dis­cus­sion about se­quenc­ing and pri­ori­tis­ing.

But, can it truth­ful­ly be said that the poor and down­trod­den were ig­nored in the 2001 to 2009 pe­ri­od, or in­deed in the pe­ri­od be­fore that?

Can it truth­ful­ly be ar­gued that the strat­e­gy of fast­track­ing the road to the 2020 Vi­sion was the wrong one?

Let the de­bate con­tin­ue.