Tony Fras­er

The sta­bil­i­sa­tion of oil and gas prices at rel­a­tive­ly high lev­els, the restart of eco­nom­ic growth, op­ti­misti­cal­ly, the ini­ti­a­tion and op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of a mean­ing­ful and sus­tain­able plan and set of pro­grammes to achieve the his­tor­i­cal goal of di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my, deep in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­struc­tion sec­tor and if nec­es­sary the pros­e­cu­tion of those guilty of cor­rupt ac­tiv­i­ty in­clu­sive of those who failed to in­sti­tu­tion­alise strict su­per­vi­so­ry sys­tems to mon­i­tor the ex­pen­di­ture of bil­lions of tax­pay­ers' dol­lars are but a few mat­ters that must be on the short­list of wish­es for 2010. At the po­lit­i­cal lev­el, the even­tu­al hold­ing of promised lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, and this af­ter four years of still-to-be- jus­ti­fied post­pone­ments and the freez­ing of the de­mo­c­ra­t­ic tra­di­tion of al­low­ing peo­ple to de­ter­mine who should gov­ern them, is a ma­jor ex­pec­ta­tion of the year now open­ing be­fore us. So too must there be hope for change in the bac­cha­na­lian po­lit­i­cal cul­ture that has now be­come en­trenched in op­po­si­tion pol­i­tics. The na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty must cer­tain­ly be hop­ing for a cred­i­ble and op­er­a­tional al­ter­na­tive to the in­cum­bent Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment.

Such trans­for­ma­tion in op­po­si­tion pol­i­tics is des­per­ate­ly re­quired to con­tribute to the en­hance­ment of the qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance and the lev­el of mean­ing­ful democ­ra­cy which are ab­solute­ly vi­tal if a tru­ly par­tic­i­pa- to­ry po­lit­i­cal cul­ture is to be de­vel­oped. This is so as it is with­out doubt that the dis­or­gan­i­sa­tion and the re­sult­ing in­ef­fec­tive­ness of op­po­si­tion pol­i­tics has been a ma­jor con­trib­u­tor to the poor qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance that now ex­ists. The ar­ro­gance and the feel­ing of in­vin­ci­bil­i­ty as­sumed by the Patrick Man­ning-led Gov­ern­ment of the last eight years has been ac­quired in an en­vi­ron­ment where se­ri­ous chal­lenge does not ex­ist. As­sured in the cir­cum­stances that the op­po­si­tion par­ties and per­son­al­i­ties were too busy fight­ing each oth­er and too con­sumed by bac­cha­na­lian pol­i­tics rather than be­ing able to pen­e­trate the many soft un­der­sides of the Gov­ern­ment, Prime Min­is­ter Man­ning ran away with the state pow­er. In­deed he dis­missed the op­po­si­tion as be­ing "ir­rel­e­vant."

In the cir­cum­stances he felt as­sured that he could com­mit the coun­try to host­ing two in­ter­na­tion­al con­fer­ences with­out first en­gag­ing mean­ing­ful con­sul­ta­tion and es­tab­lish­ing a clear and sus­tain­able ra­tio­nale for spend­ing more than $500 mil­lion. He felt no dan­ger there­fore to pri­ori­tise the con­struc­tion of the NA­PA to host Chogm to pro­vide him with an in­ter­na­tion­al stage while the util­i­ty cul­tur­al cen­tre at the Sa­van­nah lan­guish­es and the peo­ple's Car­ni­val re­mains with­out a home. He felt as­sured that he could con­struct the Hy­att, the In­ter­na­tion­al Fi­nan­cial Cen­tre build­ing with­out lay­ing a sol­id ba­sis for the tourism and fi­nan­cial sec­tors. He al­so de­ter­mined to spend a small for­tune on the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence, Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre and mi­ni con­cert hall, con­struct VIP fa­cil­i­ties at the old Pi­ar­co Air­port, spend hun­dreds of mil­lions on the un­fin­ished Tarou­ba sta­di­um, be ul­ti­mate­ly re­spon­si­ble for the wastage at the To­ba­go hos­pi­tal, while ba­sic fa­cil­i­ties and ser­vices re­main in­ad­e­quate and have not pro­vid­ed the econ­o­my with the in­fra­struc­ture and im­pe­tus to re­con­struct the mono-crop econ­o­my from its his­tor­i­cal de­sign.

Add to all of these de­fi­cien­cies, the Gov­ern­ment has not been able to make a sig­nif­i­cant im­pact on the flour­ish­ing crim­i­nal cul­ture, which has had se­vere con­se­quences for or­di­nary cit­i­zens and res­i­dents who do not have the ben­e­fit of armed 24-hour guards. Iden­ti­fy­ing the in­ad­e­qua­cy of the op­po­si­tion as a con­trib­u­to­ry fac­tor to the per­for­mance of the Gov­ern­ment is not an at­tempt to re­lieve it from the ma­jor re­spon­si­bil­i­ties and di­rect in­volve­ment in the above short­com­ings of gov­er­nance, as ul­ti­mate­ly it is the Gov­ern­ment which has to de­vel­op and im­ple­ment poli­cies and pro­grammes. So to does it have to es­tab­lish pri­or­i­ties and em­bark on the course of eco­nom­ic growth through its choice of projects. How­ev­er, that the Gov­ern­ment has been able to es­sen­tial­ly es­cape con­cen­trat­ed and clin­i­cal scruti­ny, must be a re­flec­tion on the pro­bity of the op­po­si­tion.

But above and be­yond the hope for what the Gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion have to achieve in 2010 is the eter­nal hope that the pop­u­la­tion will be­gin to un­der­stand that it has to es­tab­lish the pa­ra­me­ters for gov­ern­ment and the qual­i­ty of gov­er­nance. If the pop­u­la­tion were to think for one mo­ment of what has been the re­al­i­ty of the last eight years, dur­ing which the Gov­ern­ment has re­ceived and spent ap­prox­i­mate­ly $300 bil­lion, and that is a mere guessti­mate which is more than like­ly to be con­ser­v­a­tive, how much of a say have the or­di­nary cit­i­zens and res­i­dents had in de­ci­sions made to utilise this wind­fall re­sult­ing from the es­ca­la­tion in the prices of oil and gas? The Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion, like the UNC, NAR, Cham­bers and Williams PNM, has sim­ply es­tab­lished its plans, projects, pro­grammes and pri­or­i­ties and gone ahead and en­gaged them with­out the slight­est ref­er­ence to what the pop­u­la­tion thinks to be the best op­tions.

More­over, in­creas­ing­ly the ten­den­cy has been to damn any voic­es of protest, in­sult the in­tel­li­gence of the pop­u­la­tion with the fee­blest of ra­tio­nales. Neo­phyte min­is­ter Pe­ter Tay­lor re­cent­ly took this ar­ro­gance to a new high with his con­dem­na­tion of hon­est cit­i­zens who have worked for a life­time to es­tab­lish their prop­er­ties, all the while obey­ing the law and pay­ing what­ev­er was re­quired of them by the ex­ist­ing prop­er­ty tax laws, with his in­sult­ing claim that they have been "liv­ing off the fat of the land." But per­haps the most fer­vent hope of this col­umn for the new year, one which can as­sist in achiev­ing the ob­jec­tive of push­ing the pop­u­la­tion on stage to be part of the de­ci­sion-mak­ing process and not al­low­ing any gov­ern­ment to usurp state pow­er, is that we could be­gin to over­come the "nig--- and coo---" grouse we have been sad­dled with by his­to­ry and the prac­tice of par­ty pol­i­tics.

Fix­at­ed as the body politic is with the eth­nic is­sue, it means that Afro-Tri­nis, in the main, will do and say noth­ing against its par­ty in pow­er, and In­do-Tri­nis will adopt the same at­ti­tude once their po­lit­i­cal par­ty holds the reigns of pow­er. Un­der­stand­ably, it will take far more than the wish­es of a news­pa­per colum­nist to achieve this lib­er­at­ing ob­jec­tive, but the process has to be ini­ti­at­ed, peo­ple have got to start be­com­ing trust­ing. What bet­ter place to ini­ti­ate such hope than in a New Year's wish list.