Raphael John-Lall

The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance has fall­en short of the promis­es they made in their elec­tion man­i­festo last year says econ­o­mist In­dera Sage­wan-Ali. Ac­cord­ing to re­cent polls in­clud­ing last Sun­day's ANSA McAL Psy­cho­log­i­cal Re­search Cen­tre's poll in the Sun­day Guardian, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's rat­ing has fall­en over the last year. The poll was done be­tween April 18 and 28. "For the first year, the Gov­ern­ment has not per­formed as of my ex­pec­ta­tions, and if you look at the polls, the ex­pec­ta­tions of the peo­ple," she said. "The man­i­festo is not in sync with their per­for­mance over the last year...The promis­es with the old age pen­sion and the lap­tops were kept and peo­ple un­der­stood those are po­lit­i­cal promis­es that are not dif­fi­cult to keep."

Sage­wan-Ali told the T&T Guardian this yes­ter­day, at the South Caribbean Con­fer­ence of the Sev­enth-Day Ad­ven­tist (SDA) Eight An­nu­al Cel­e­bra­tion of In­di­an Ar­rival Day held at the SDA Church, St Au­gus­tine.

She added that the re­sults of the poll should come as a sur­prise to no one. "I am not sur­prised by the re­sults of the polls...What I have been say­ing over the past year are what peo­ple are judg­ing the Gov­ern­ment on," she said. "They are judg­ing the Gov­ern­ment on how they run the econ­o­my, on the is­sue of con­fi­dence in the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty, on the ba­sis of a lack of a clear pro­gramme on where the ad­min­is­tra­tion is tak­ing the coun­try." Sage­wan-Ali said peo­ple had the per­cep­tion that the present Gov­ern­ment was sim­ply car­ry­ing on the same poli­cies that was of­fered by the last Gov­ern­ment.

"What the re­sults of the poll are say­ing is that it is much the same of what they re­ject­ed at the polls of the last ad­min­is­tra­tion," she said. "A lot of the pro­grammes be­ing re­ject­ed are a mere con­tin­u­a­tion of the PNM's pro­grammes... Peo­ple vot­ed for this Gov­ern­ment be­cause the Gov­ern­ment said they had a new vi­sion."

Speak­ing on the Gov­ern­ment's poli­cies, she said the Gov­ern­ment had made a lot of er­rors and had not solved a lot of the ex­ist­ing prob­lems. "Peo­ple are look­ing at the more fun­da­men­tal types of is­sues like crime, like at is­sues like the Resh­mi af­fair...That ap­point­ment should have been re­ject­ed," she said. "In the econ­o­my, the growth pro­jec­tion for that was two to three per cent and has been re­vised down­wards by the Cen­tral Bank to one to two per cent.

"The de­cline in crime has not been sig­nif­i­cant enough to live peo­ple sense of safe­ty." Peo­ple in gen­er­al have been let down by the Gov­ern­ment, she lament­ed. "I am say­ing, based on the polls, peo­ple are dis­sat­is­fied, not be­cause they ex­pect­ed im­me­di­ate turn­around and for the Gov­ern­ment to wave a mag­ic wand, but peo­ple ex­pect­ed to see clear signs of a new di­rec­tion, new poli­cies and pro­grammes and a gen­er­al sense of where we go­ing as a coun­try," she said.