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Sunday, February 16, 2025

The President speaks out

by

20100117

?Last Wednes­day, at the for­mal open­ing of Par­lia­ment, Pres­i­dent George Maxwell Richards gave what was de­cid­ed­ly not a "throne speech." Tra­di­tion­al­ly, such a speech is one in which the head of state out­lines the gov­ern­ment's leg­isla­tive agen­da for the year. In T&T, we have dis­pensed with such a tra­di­tion in re­cent times, and this has ac­tu­al­ly re­dound­ed to the ben­e­fit of the cit­i­zen­ry. Can you imag­ine the Queen of Eng­land, or even a Gov­er­nor-Gen­er­al mak­ing the kind of state­ments such as those made by our own Pres­i­dent Richards? He first point­ed out that there was se­ri­ous need in T&T to en­hance our lev­el of pro­duc­tiv­i­ty. In oth­er words, we are in­ef­fi­cient and too bu­reau­crat­ic.

As in­dica­tive of this, the Pres­i­dent cit­ed the Glob­al Com­pet­i­tive­ness In­dex is­sued by the World Eco­nom­ic Fo­rum. T&T is ranked 86 out of 133 coun­tries. To put this in con­text, it must be point­ed out that there are some 200 coun­tries in the world, but da­ta re­lat­ed on­ly to these 133: most Cari­com coun­tries were not in­clud­ed. Nonethe­less, it is of in­ter­est to note that Switzer­land is ranked No 1, the US No 2, Bar­ba­dos No 48, and Viet­nam No 75. T&T is said to have a com­pet­i­tive ad­van­tage in 28 in­di­ca­tors (in­clud­ing ed­u­ca­tion), but is at a dis­ad­van­tage in 81. The lat­ter in­cludes such mat­ters as crime and vi­o­lence, work eth­ic and ca­pac­i­ty for in­no­va­tion. Com­par­a­tive­ly speak­ing, then, we are lack­ing in these ar­eas, and thus demon­strate poor work eth­ic.

In­ef­fi­cient bu­reau­cra­cy

Pro­duc­tiv­i­ty is ham­pered by in­ef­fi­cient bu­reau­cra­cy. For a coun­try that has been boast­ing of Vi­sion 2020, this low rat­ing, which is a drop from a prime po­si­tion of 42, eight years ago, must ran­kle with the gov­ern­ment of the day.

We may be seen as mov­ing down­wards in­stead of up­wards to first-world sta­tus

Mov­ing on­to specifics, the Pres­i­dent com­ment­ed that, in so far as ba­sic needs were con­cerned, trans­porta­tion, wa­ter, roads, waste dis­pos­al and com­mu­ni­ca­tions, T&T was "not where we should be." This was, how­ev­er, the least of his salvos. Ac­cord­ing to the Pres­i­dent, the per­cent­age of per­sons who en­joy ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion in this coun­try, ten per cent, was still low, as com­pared to coun­tries such as the US (38 per cent). Since ed­u­ca­tion is the foun­da­tion of eco­nom­ic and eco­nom­ic growth (a point he made), how does this im­pact on our de­vel­op­ment?

The gov­ern­ment must not have been hap­py to hear this, since they have been tout­ing their ini­tia­tives in the field of ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, in par­tic­u­lar as one of their thrusts to­wards first-world sta­tus. The Pres­i­dent went fur­ther to sug­gest that in T&T the val­ue of ed­u­ca­tion was not be­ing em­pha­sised. This is ev­i­denced, he says, in that the many pro­grammes for skills train­ing are not be­ing op­ti­mal­ly utilised, and that there are not many peo­ple at our uni­ver­si­ties, con­sid­er­ing that the state is sub­si­dis­ing ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion to the ex­tent that it is. Part of the rea­son for this fail­ure, he says, is that prop­er val­ues are not be­ing in­cul­cat­ed at the lev­el of the fam­i­ly, so as to pro­duce a thirst for knowl­edge. One of the more poignant is­sues con­tained in His Ex­cel­len­cy's speech was the ques­tion of pen­sion arrange­ments for re­tired pub­lic ser­vants. Im­plic­it in his state­ments was the sug­ges­tion that the state has failed in this re­gard.

Se­nior Cit­i­zens Grant

This might well be so, since al­though we have been hear­ing of the up­grade of the Se­nior Cit­i­zens Grant and NIS, noth­ing has been said of im­prov­ing the lot of those who have served the coun­try for decades and re­tired in such ser­vice. The at­ti­tude of the au­thor­i­ties al­most seems to be: why should they be treat­ed any dif­fer­ent­ly from reg­u­lar pen­sion­ers? The an­swer is ob­vi­ous: they have earned their pen­sions by di­rect ser­vice to the na­tion. Yet, as was point­ed out with in­fla­tion, high food prices and ill health such per­sons are of­ten un­able to main­tain a de­cent stan­dard of liv­ing, far off the style to which they would have been ac­cus­tomed. Many of these pub­lic ser­vants might have even mort­gaged their homes to pay for their chil­dren's ed­u­ca­tion and now have to sup­port a mort­gage.

The Pres­i­dent, more or less, called for the Gov­ern­ment to con­sid­er re­view­ing such pen­sions. What stood out to me above all else, how­ev­er, was the recog­ni­tion by the Pres­i­dent of the frus­tra­tion of the av­er­age cit­i­zen in his "dai­ly grind." His Ex­cel­len­cy point­ed to the poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion by lead­ers on sig­nif­i­cant mat­ters that could add to the dis­tress of cit­i­zens.

One clear ex­am­ple of this was in re­la­tion to the new prop­er­ty tax sys­tem, he said. There was an ad­ju­ra­tion (al­most) to the au­thor­i­ties to lis­ten to the views of oth­ers in ar­riv­ing at their de­ci­sions. There was al­so, it seemed, a warn­ing that the peo­ple are not hap­py.

The speech de­liv­ered by the Pres­i­dent at the open­ing of this ses­sion of Par­lia­ment might well go down in his­to­ry as one of the strongest by a head of state who is not head of gov­ern­ment. Our Pres­i­dents clear­ly see them­selves as not mere tit­u­lar heads of state. Whether Pres­i­dent Richards' state­ments will im­pact on the gov­ern­ment at all re­mains to be seen. The PM has, some­what am­bigu­ous­ly, com­ment­ed that the Pres­i­dent was above the cut and thrust of pol­i­tics, and was free to ex­press him­self. What this means, in terms of gov­ern­ment re­ac­tion, re­mains to be seen. It is to be hoped, how­ev­er, that they take heed. Af­ter all, it is 20 years since 1990 and on the last day of De­cem­ber we did have a blue moon.


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