To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Like the de­ci­sion to dis­solve Par­lia­ment in the mid­dle of a five-year term, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning's sev­en-day de­lay in call­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion is strange and puz­zling. It is un­prece­dent­ed in the coun­try's 48 years of post-In­de­pen­dence his­to­ry–and the 11 gen­er­al elec­tions held in that pe­ri­od–for the Prime Min­is­ter to dis­solve the Par­lia­ment and then not call the elec­tions im­me­di­ate­ly. The Prime Min­is­ter may have been swayed to his choice of May 24 be­cause that date is the an­niver­sary of the 1971 gen­er­al elec­tion that would have pro­pelled a young, ge­ol­o­gy grad­u­ate named Patrick Man­ning in­to Par­lia­ment on the back of a no-vote cam­paign, led by ANR Robin­son, which re­sult­ed in the rul­ing par­ty sweep­ing all 36 seats.

Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning's de­ci­sion to ad­vise Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards that the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion would be held on May 24 has eased the mood of un­cer­tain­ty that was be­gin­ning to de­vel­op in the coun­try. Pick­ing up this mood of un­cer­tain­ty on Wednes­day, the pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, An­gel­la Per­sad, bold­ly re­quest­ed of the Prime Min­is­ter, who was present at the Cham­ber's an­nu­al meet­ing, to "re­veal the elec­tion date as ear­ly as pos­si­ble so we can set­tle back to work." Speak­ing on Thurs­day, Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor Ewart Williams said he sus­pect­ed that the re­ac­tion to the dis­so­lu­tion of Par­lia­ment "would be one of wait-and-see and in­deed it's pos­si­ble that we would see very lit­tle at­tempt at re­stock­ing, new in­vest­ment, tak­ing your plans off the shelf and im­ple­ment­ing them un­til the new ad­min­is­tra­tion takes ef­fect."

Both Mrs Per­sad and Mr Williams seem to be sug­gest­ing that the for­ma­tion of a new ad­min­is­tra­tion may pro­vide some im­pe­tus for new in­vest­ment de­ci­sions which, they im­ply, would fol­low May 24.

But for more than two years the coun­try has been bereft of the amount of new in­vest­ment–in ei­ther the en­er­gy or non-en­er­gy sec­tor–that is need­ed to re­verse the eco­nom­ic de­cline and place the coun­try on a path of sus­tain­able eco­nom­ic growth. The evap­o­ra­tion of in­vest­ment by both the pri­vate and the pub­lic sec­tors pre­dat­ed the eco­nom­ic down­turn that af­flict­ed the coun­try in the last quar­ter of 2008. The lack of pub­lic sec­tor in­vest­ment may have been caused by prob­lems sur­round­ing the prov­ing up of new nat­ur­al gas re­serves and an ir­ra­tional an­ti-in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion pos­ture adopt­ed by some uni­ver­si­ty lec­tur­ers and oth­ers. These is­sues would al­so have had an im­pact on the for­eign multi­na­tion­als who wish to de­vel­op our nat­ur­al re­sources.

Like the Prime Min­is­ter's de­ci­sion to de­lay call­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion, the de­ci­sion by a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age of the lo­cal pri­vate sec­tor to with­draw from in­vest­ing in the lo­cal econ­o­my is strange and dif­fi­cult to fath­om. It be­speaks a deep­er and more in­sid­i­ous un­cer­tain­ty than that touched up­on by Mr Williams and Mrs Per­sad in their own ways. The busi­ness­men and en­tre­pre­neurs who have re­mained on the side­lines–park­ing their mon­ey in the safe­ty of sav­ings ac­counts both lo­cal and for­eign–should be re­mind­ed of the sig­nif­i­cant leap of faith that An­tho­ny N Sab­ga showed when he ac­quired the con­trol­ling in­ter­est in McE­near­ney Al­stons in 1986–al­so an elec­tion year and a time of sig­nif­i­cant eco­nom­ic down­turn. The times re­quire a sim­i­lar vi­sion in the coun­try's fu­ture. It is to be hope that the 2010 gen­er­al elec­tion re­sults in an end to the bick­er­ing and sour­ness that has in­creas­ing­ly dom­i­nat­ed the pub­lic mood in T&T over the last three years or so. While by no means seek­ing to make a par­ti­san point, this coun­try would cer­tain­ly ben­e­fit from the boost and the feel­ing of one love that many felt in the im­me­di­ate af­ter­math of the 1986 gen­er­al elec­tion.