To­day's Ed­i­to­r­i­al

Yes­ter­day's lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion brings to an end one of the most in­tense pe­ri­ods of de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ac­tiv­i­ty in this coun­try's his­to­ry.

The pe­ri­od of in­tense po­lit­i­cal ac­tiv­i­ty be­gan with the in­ter­nal par­ty elec­tions of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress in Jan­u­ary, which re­sult­ed in Mrs Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar sweep­ing aside Bas­deo Pan­day, the founder of the UNC. Four months lat­er, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, with close to three years left on his term of of­fice, which be­gan in No­vem­ber 2007, de­cid­ed to call a gen­er­al elec­tion. It's his­to­ry that the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment was led in­to de­feat by Mr Man­ning, re­sult­ing in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion led by Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, tak­ing of­fice with 29 con­stituen­cies.

Fol­low­ing the gen­er­al elec­tion, the de­feat­ed PNM held an in­ter­nal elec­tion with Kei­th Row­ley emerg­ing as the par­ty's po­lit­i­cal leader, fol­low­ing his elec­tion as Leader of the Op­po­si­tion. Dur­ing her first ad­dress to Par­lia­ment as this coun­try's leader, Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that the long-over­due lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions would have been held yes­ter­day. The lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions should sig­nal the end of the elec­toral pe­ri­od and, with its dom­i­nance of the ad­min­is­tra­tion at both the cen­tral and lo­cal gov­ern­ment lev­els as­sured, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship should be in a po­si­tion to set­tle down and gov­ern the coun­try.

The end of the elec­toral pe­ri­od will mean that there will be less need for po­lit­i­cal grand­stand­ing aimed at gain­ing elec­toral ad­van­tage and greater con­cen­tra­tion on craft­ing re­al­is­tic poli­cies. At some point, the Gov­ern­ment will be re­quired to make the hard choic­es be­tween poli­cies that will af­fect in­ter­est groups that have been key to the Part­ner­ship's elec­toral suc­cess. The next big task for the gov­ern­ment will be the 2011 bud­get which is like­ly to be pre­sent­ed against a back­drop of a stag­nant econ­o­my plagued by high in­fla­tion, de­clin­ing tax rev­enues and height­ened ex­pec­ta­tions of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship to de­liv­er. In the up­com­ing bud­get, the Gov­ern­ment will strive to achieve some­thing that very few economies in the world have been able to do: stim­u­late the econ­o­my while en­sur­ing that the rate of in­fla­tion does not climb high­er than the 13.7 per cent that the Cen­tral Bank re­port­ed last week.

And all of this in the con­text of a bud­get in which the ex­pen­di­ture is like­ly to ex­ceed the rev­enue for a third oc­ca­sion. The Gov­ern­ment faces two sig­nif­i­cant and re­lat­ed chal­lenges: chart­ing a vi­sion for the fu­ture which is aligned to that of the ma­jor­i­ty of peo­ple and find­ing some way to en­cour­age the pri­vate sec­tor, both lo­cal and for­eign, to re­sume in­vest­ment in the econ­o­my. On the is­sue of the vi­sion for the fu­ture, the Gov­ern­ment should con­sid­er set­ting medi­um-term fis­cal tar­gets which would out­line the lim­its of ex­pen­di­ture for the next five years and pro­pos­als to en­sure fis­cal bal­ance as soon as pos­si­ble.

The Gov­ern­ment al­so needs to look very care­ful­ly at the in­vest­ment en­vi­ron­ment in this coun­try for both en­er­gy and non-en­er­gy in­vestors. It needs to en­sure that all gov­ern­ment agen­cies do every­thing pos­si­ble to en­sure that do­ing busi­ness in T&T be­comes eas­i­er. This process of mit­i­gat­ing all as­pects of the bu­reau­cra­cy should be part of a larg­er plan aimed at en­cour­ag­ing new in­vest­ment in the lo­cal econ­o­my. On Fri­day, the Cen­tral Bank re­port­ed that pri­vate sec­tor cred­it had con­tin­ued to con­tract against the back­ground of weak do­mes­tic de­mand.

It es­ti­mat­ed that up to May, the most re­cent month for which the in­for­ma­tion was avail­able, on a year-on-year ba­sis, bor­row­ing by the pri­vate sec­tor had de­clined for nine con­sec­u­tive months. No econ­o­my can ad­vance if its pri­vate sec­tor is not mak­ing new in­vest­ments.