In ret­ro­spect, there is noth­ing that we ought to be ashamed of. Over the last 55 years, large­ly through our guid­ance, Trinidad and To­ba­go has im­proved rapid­ly. First, our na­tion­al in­come in­creased al­most 50-fold. In 1956, the av­er­age in­come of a Trinida­di­an and To­bag­on­ian was US$380; to­day it is US$20,035. Our GDP grew from US$237.7 mil­lion in 1956 to US$163 bil­lion in 2008. In 1963 the un­em­ploy­ment rate was 13.7 per cent; to­day it stands at 5.8 per cent, a per­for­mance that is bet­ter than the Unit­ed States or Eu­rope.

In 2005 the Unit­ed Na­tions De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme ranked Trinidad and To­ba­go 57 out of 177 coun­tries, "the high­est des­ig­na­tion for coun­tries whose life ex­pectan­cy, adult lit­er­a­cy, and per capi­ta in­come place them in the top tier (coun­tries of the world.)" We can take pride in the fact that these de­vel­op­ments oc­curred un­der PNM's stew­ard­ship. We have a few bil­lions in sav­ings and our man­u­fac­tur­ers are the most ef­fec­tive in the Caribbean.

But if we did well eco­nom­i­cal­ly, we can take pride in the fact that PNM's ma­jor con­tri­bu­tion to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment lay in our build­ing a na­tion; keep­ing our so­ci­ety to­geth­er; the rel­a­tive ci­vil­i­ty of our po­lit­i­cal cul­ture (I do not know of one per­son who was mur­dered or harmed dur­ing our many elec­tion cam­paigns over the past 50 years); the peace­ful tran­si­tion of pow­er from one gov­ern­ment to an­oth­er–when you are de­feat­ed you just leave of­fice and try an­oth­er day–and the tremen­dous racial har­mo­ny that ex­ists in our beau­ti­ful is­land.

We of­fered due le­gal process to mu­ti­neers and in­sur­rec­tion­ists, not to en­cour­age their be­hav­iour but as hall­marks of our democ­ra­cy at work of­fer­ing equal pro­tec­tion of the law to every­one. What is the point of all of this? It is sim­ply a re­minder that in the 40 of the last 55 years that we have been in pow­er, we led this so­ci­ety in a man­ner that would make any democ­ra­cy proud. We in the PNM have set the mark for what a democ­ra­cy is and how one con­ducts one­self in gov­ern­ment and in op­po­si­tion. We are hu­man and have made our share of mis­takes. Even so we can be proud of what we have be­queathed to the na­tion and it is from this pos­ture that we must now re­group and march con­fi­dent­ly in­to the fu­ture.

Resur­gence

But to­day is a new day and it is not suf­fi­cient just to look back. Even as we re­flect we must think ahead as we go for­ward. As we set out to re­build our move­ment we need to lay out in clear terms where we wish to take our na­tion and why. In as much as the PP may be awash with easy mon­ey; in as much as they have promised the peo­ple the sky and the moon, the fact re­mains that they re­al­ly have no track record or pol­i­cy up­on which to judge them. In so far as some of them have any record at all it may on­ly be a po­lice record of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter.

As promis­ing as they may look; as ag­gres­sive as they may sound–just lis­ten to Jack Warn­er and Anand Ram­lo­gan–as in­te­grat­ed as they may want to ap­pear, they still re­main a gath­er­ing of con­ve­nience, they still re­main Jack's po­lit­i­cal in­vest­ment, ready to fall apart at the seams the first mo­ment that they are chal­lenged with a re­al prob­lem re­quir­ing them to make the hard choic­es about na­tion­al pri­or­i­ties.

Of course the cam­ou­flage has al­ready be­gun to fall off. To­day the PNM presents a full slate of 134 can­di­dates. They had a Fri­day night launch and pre­sent­ed 24 can­di­dates with a shame­less an­nounce­ment that the horse trad­ing and bar­ter­ing are in­com­plete and the Prime Min­is­ter has to go on va­ca­tion so Jack could get an ear­ly climb on the PP beanstalk. They promised an ear­ly bud­get but faced with post-elec­tion re­al­i­ty check they opt­ed for more elec­tion in­stead.

As the PP sup­ply naked po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy we are yet to be told how they will ful­fil the promis­es that they made in the gen­er­al elec­tion. "The Trea­sury is emp­ty," their be­mused eco­nom­ic schol­ar de­clares un­til the Gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral bank chides him but which to the lay­man means he does not re­al­ly know what he is talk­ing about. What are we to make of the fact that the ex-gov­er­nor of the Cen­tral Bank does not know what a trans­fer of $600 mil­lion to the Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund looks like? And he is sup­posed to look af­ter our fi­nances for the next five years.

Ex­pect more in­com­pe­tence, more back­track­ing, more grand­stand­ing for the me­dia, more ex­pos­es, more blus­ter, for that is what they know and that is what they are about. They at­tempt to fire every­one who wasn't part of their elec­tion band­wag­on and in­tend to stop every­thing which they did not un­der­stand or did not agree with so we wait to see their pro­gramme to deal with the so­cial cost of their cal­lous­ness and the eco­nom­ic re­ver­sal of our in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion plans.

They will shut down the smelter project and con­fine La Brea and en­vi­rons to per­sis­tent pover­ty and un­der­de­vel­op­ment. We wait to see when they can­cel the con­tracts, pay the in­curred loss­es, dis­man­tle the al­most com­plet­ed $2 bil­lion pow­er sta­tion, pay off the part­ners, redi­rect the port and kiss the thou­sands of jobs good­bye. Don't you want your $3,000/ month pen­sion now, no games? You want the $20 min­i­mum wage, no chirrup chirrup! No prop­er­ty tax on your busi­ness prop­er­ty! That was the deal! Com­put­ers for all! Any word on the pay hike promised to Cepep and URP work­ers?

This PNM will de­fend our democ­ra­cy, be the voice of the op­pressed, the vic­timised and the down­trod­den and a tire­less ad­vo­cate and de­fend­er of our eco­nom­ic po­ten­tial. A vote for the PNM in this lo­cal elec­tion al­so sends a mes­sage to the PP that the peo­ple will de­fend their in­ter­ests, pro­tect their op­por­tu­ni­ties for equal ad­vance­ment, hold their Gov­ern­ment to high eth­i­cal stan­dards and ex­pect that elect­ed of­fi­cials keep their com­mit­ment to the peo­ple.

But that can­not be our cen­tral busi­ness to­day. Our busi­ness to­day is to out­line a strat­e­gy, in the broad­est of terms, of where we wish to take our peo­ple. In the past I have spo­ken about widen­ing our po­lit­i­cal base; wel­com­ing every­one in­to the par­ty no mat­ter what his/her per­sua­sion has been; en­cour­age de­bate with­in the par­ty and ap­pre­ci­ate our in­tel­lec­tu­al ori­gin–that is a good thing; de­mand democ­ra­cy with­in our par­ty and con­tin­ue to be a ral­ly­ing point of all and for all. But pre­cise­ly be­cause we were here be­fore we must out­line some new prin­ci­ples of de­vel­op­ment which would be the busi­ness of the par­ty to de­vel­op.

DR KEI­TH ROW­LEY