Kevin Baldeosingh

?Both the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) and the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) have been mak­ing many promis­es even be­fore the elec­tion cam­paign of­fi­cial­ly start­ed in Au­gust.

But which par­ty is promis­ing more?

As it turns out, the PNM and the PP are neck for neck, ac­cord­ing to a count of the promis­es list­ed in their man­i­festos, which were both re­leased in Au­gust.

Both con­tain around 300 promis­es. It is dif­fi­cult to be ex­act, since some of the promis­es are re­peat­ed in dif­fer­ent forms, es­pe­cial­ly in the PP man­i­festo.

The PNM has bul­let points for its promis­es, which makes count­ing con­ve­nient, but the PP seems to have aimed at 30 promis­es per sec­tor, which makes a to­tal es­ti­mate eas­i­er.

The core ques­tion, of course, is how re­li­able are these promis­es? The Part­ner­ship has pro­vid­ed its own mea­sure by claim­ing in its 2015 man­i­festo that "90 per cent Of Our 2010 Man­i­festo Promis­es Have Been De­liv­ered And/Or Are In Progress."

The "in progress" phrase is a hedge, since they can claim that a promise has been kept just on the ba­sis of a signed agree­ment or a sod-turn­ing cer­e­mo­ny. But what per­cent­age of their promis­es have ac­tu­al­ly been de­liv­ered?

(An analy­sis of PNM promis­es was writ­ten by re­porter Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly and colum­nist Hamid Ghany in this week's Sun­day Guardian.)

The PP's 2010 man­i­festo had just over 400 promis­es. Two of the pledges at the start of the doc­u­ment ap­par­ent­ly fall un­der the 10 per cent that have nei­ther been de­liv­ered nor are in progress: "Lim­it­ing the Prime Min­is­ter to two suc­ces­sive terms as Head of Gov­ern­ment" and "Rules gov­ern­ing the con­duct of the Gov­ern­ment and po­lit­i­cal par­ties dur­ing an elec­tion pe­ri­od."

The third promise was half-ful­filled: "We will es­tab­lish a Con­sti­tu­tion Com­mis­sion to en­gage in the widest pos­si­ble con­sul­ta­tion as a pre-req­ui­site to con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form."

And what about the main con­cern of cit­i­zens for the past 15 years–crime? The PP's 2010 man­i­festo had ap­prox­i­mate­ly 21 crime-fight­ing promis­es, while its 2015 man­i­festo has 30 such promis­es. (See Box One)

Of the ten key ini­tia­tives list­ed in the 2010 doc­u­ment, on­ly two have been im­ple­ment­ed: set­ting up the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tional Cen­tre (NSOC) and strength­en­ing "the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to link in­tel­li­gence, strat­e­gy and ex­e­cu­tion in crime fight­ing." How­ev­er, the over­all goal of re­duc­ing se­ri­ous crimes, ac­cord­ing to Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Stephen Williams, has been achieved with a 50 per cent re­duc­tion (ex­cept for homi­cides) as com­pared to 2009 fig­ures. The Part­ner­ship al­so had a 32-point check­list ti­tled "120 Days of Im­me­di­ate Ac­tion."

Box Two lists the 13 promis­es which weren't kept. (See Box Two)

Us­ing the loos­est cri­te­ria, 20 of these pro­pos­als were im­ple­ment­ed, which is 56 per cent. The 2010 man­i­festo al­so had nine gen­er­al goals, with­in which the fol­low­ing promis­es were not kept: a land use and phys­i­cal plan­ning frame­work; pover­ty re­duc­tion; sus­tain­able jobs; flood se­cu­ri­ty; and im­proved pro­duc­tiv­i­ty.

The PP al­so promised: "We will have clean, re­spon­si­ble and re­spon­sive gov­ern­ment with leg­isla­tive changes and con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ments to curb ex­cess­es and abuse of pow­er."

In re­spect to this last, the 2010 man­i­festo had 12 key pro­pos­als. Of these on­ly two were im­ple­ment­ed–sup­port­ing a free press (by amend­ing the Li­bel Act) and pass­ing pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion. That's a 16 per cent promise-keep­ing rate.

Us­ing this sam­ple ap­proach, it ap­pears that the ac­tu­al per­cent­age of promis­es de­liv­ered by the PP is around 25 per cent–a far cry from the claim of 90 per cent.

Crime-fight­ing promis­es

�2 We will sup­port the man­age­ment of the Po­lice ser­vice to en­sure that there are prop­er lev­els of polic­ing and hold it ac­count­able for ef­fec­tive de­liv­ery through the es­tab­lish­ment of clear mea­sur­able bench­marks for crime re­duc­tion and con­tain­ment

�2 We will es­tab­lish a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Op­er­a­tional Cen­tre (NSOC), in­volv­ing use of tech­nol­o­gy to set up a re­al-time cen­tralised sys­tem for track­ing crime. This will in­volve equip­ping every Po­lice ve­hi­cle with a Glob­al Po­si­tion­ing Sys­tem (GPS) and link­ing with every po­lice sta­tion through an ap­pro­pri­ate tech­nol­o­gy plat­form. Abuse of equip­ment will not be tol­er­at­ed

�2 We will en­force traf­fic laws. A ma­jor­i­ty of crime in­volves the use of ve­hi­cles. En­force­ment of road traf­fic laws and reg­u­la­tion would serve as a ma­jor de­ter­rent to such il­le­gal ac­tiv­i­ty. A va­ri­ety of mech­a­nisms in­clud­ing Radar Speed De­tec­tion Guns will be used in this

�2 We will use GPS bracelets on of­fend­ers who are on pro­ba­tion but are still deemed a se­cu­ri­ty risk (so that their move­ment can be mon­i­tored) and if leg­is­la­tion is re­quired, we will take the nec­es­sary steps

�2 We will guard our coast­line through the 360?radar linked to all branch­es of the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices. Con­nec­tiv­i­ty will be mon­i­tored and we will in­sist on stay­ing con­nect­ed.

�2 We will es­tab­lish the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Pro­tec­tive Ser­vices Train­ing Acad­e­my to im­prove ca­pac­i­ty of our po­lice of­fi­cers to per­form at their op­ti­mal lev­els

�2 Train­ing pro­grammes and mer­it sys­tems will be es­tab­lished to mo­ti­vate po­lice to new ideals of jus­tice

�2 We will strength­en the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil to link in­tel­li­gence, strat­e­gy and ex­e­cu­tion in crime fight­ing

�2 We will mod­ernise phys­i­cal in­fra­struc­ture and ameni­ties to boost morale and im­prove pro­duc­tiv­i­ty

�2 We will im­ple­ment the crim­i­nal in­juries and com­pen­sa­tion laws and ad­just the mea­sure of com­pen­sa­tion

Source: PP Man­i­festo, 2010

120 DAYS OF IM­ME­DI­ATE AC­TION

4. We will es­tab­lish a work­ing com­mit­tee to re­view all pro­grammes tar­get­ed at pover­ty al­le­vi­a­tion and so­cial sup­port to make rec­om­men­da­tions to: a. Strength­en syn­er­gy, reach and im­pact through ra­tio­nal­i­sa­tion and in­te­gra­tion b. Help house­holds to step up to pros­per­i­ty and to re­duce the num­ber of peo­ple clas­si­fied as poor by 2% each year.

5. We will be­gin an ag­gres­sive pro­gramme to fix all leaks in WASA's pipelines, and es­tab­lish an emer­gency re­sponse unit for mon­i­tor­ing sys­tem dys­func­tion, un­planned dis­rup­tions and cri­sis man­age­ment.

6. We will co­or­di­nate in­te­grat­ed ac­tion on wa­ter re­sources man­age­ment, drainage, ir­ri­ga­tion, flood­ing, wa­ter cap­ture, con­ser­va­tion, sus­tain­able food pro­duc­tion and food se­cu­ri­ty through syn­er­gis­tic de­ploy­ment of hu­man re­sources and equip­ment un­der state con­trol in col­lab­o­ra­tion with pri­vate con­trac­tors.

7. In part­ner­ship with CBOs and NGOs our gov­ern­ment will re­lease ap­pro­pri­ate re­sources from the Green Fund to re­for­est ar­eas that were burnt dur­ing the past dry sea­son.

10. We will be­gin a re­view process for the min­i­mum wage.

18. We will look at the im­me­di­ate chal­lenges of each hos­pi­tal and de­ter­mine what needs to be done to make an im­me­di­ate dif­fer­ence in the lives of cit­i­zens seek­ing care and we will act im­me­di­ate­ly on these–whether it is 50 more beds in a hos­pi­tal, a vi­tal piece of much-need­ed equip­ment or im­prov­ing the ef­fec­tive­ness of de­liv­ery of emer­gency pa­tient care.

21. Each min­is­ter will be re­quired to present a one-year ac­tion agen­da for con­sid­er­a­tion and ap­proval by Cab­i­net af­ter con­sul­ta­tion with se­nior min­is­te­r­i­al staff with­in thir­ty (30) work­ing days of swear­ing in. Each min­is­te­r­i­al ac­tion agen­da, once ap­proved, will be in­clud­ed in the next bud­get.

22. Each min­istry will be re­quired to be­gin work on a five-year strate­gic plan with­in the first 60 days for com­ple­tion by Feb­ru­ary 2011 with­in the frame­work of our man­i­festo.

23. We will es­tab­lish an Eco­nom­ic De­vel­op­ment Board which will con­sult with stake­hold­ers and play an ad­vi­so­ry role in pol­i­cy for­mu­la­tion.

25. We will ini­ti­ate con­sul­ta­tion to de­vel­op a co­her­ent ex­port strat­e­gy, an in­dus­tri­al pol­i­cy linked to knowl­edge for­ma­tion and a na­tion­al ser­vices in­dus­tries com­pet­i­tive­ness strat­e­gy with key stake­hold­ers.

29. We will work with the Cen­tral Bank, CSO and the pub­lic ser­vice to de­ter­mine the true con­di­tion of the coun­try's fi­nances and the state of the econ­o­my and the con­di­tion of projects to share that in­for­ma­tion with our cit­i­zens.

31. We will for­mu­late a project plan for com­ple­tion of all in­fra­struc­tur­al projects cur­rent­ly in train in To­ba­go.

32. We will es­tab­lish a Ways and Means Com­mit­tee to for­mu­late a project plan on a phased ba­sis to make all gov­ern­ment pub­lic ser­vices more ac­ces­si­ble to res­i­dents of To­ba­go.

Source: Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Man­i­festo, 2010