The gen­er­al elec­tions have come and gone and while at time of writ­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) was still dis­put­ing its out­come, the gen­er­al feel­ing is that the size of vic­to­ries are un­like­ly to be over­turned by re­counts.

I live in the Diego Mar­tin West con­stituen­cy and even though his­tor­i­cal­ly this has been a safe seat, and the Prime Min­is­ter was seek­ing re-elec­tion, the num­ber of times that the cam­paign passed in my area with the huge mu­sic trucks, like many, I too am re­lieved it is all over.

But the re­sults point to a coun­try that re­mains di­vid­ed, that is un­con­vinced by the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion and does not see the UNC as a vi­able op­tion.

It is why this vic­to­ry of the PNM is not a man­date to gov­ern as it did in the pre­ced­ing five years, and the de­feat of the UNC is a man­date to change its ap­proach to pol­i­tics.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley has al­ready sig­nalled a re­turn to aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures say­ing the next two years will be dif­fi­cult, but promis­ing that if the coun­try stays the course it will lead to a bet­ter to­mor­row.

Row­ley told the coun­try: “The next two years will be very dif­fi­cult but dur­ing that pe­ri­od we are re­quired to do things to be in a bet­ter po­si­tion to en­joy a brighter fu­ture. ”

He added, “The gov­ern­ment will play a role and build an econ­o­my in such a way that all of us are lift­ed by the ris­ing tide and say moth­er Trinidad has been good.”

Ac­cord­ing to Row­ley his pri­or­i­ties will first be to put to­geth­er a Cab­i­net and then to pre­pare the 2021 an­nu­al bud­get.

This gov­ern­ment has to do bet­ter than it did in the last five years.

It has to frontal­ly ad­dress the chal­lenges that make it a vir­tu­al night­mare to do busi­ness in this coun­try. The for­mer Min­is­ter of Trade re­mind­ed me of the stu­dent who talked a lot in class and when­ev­er it came to the ex­ams per­formed poor­ly.

Un­der her watch the coun­try’s Ease of Do­ing busi­ness got pro­gres­sive­ly worse and the Row­ley ad­min­is­tra­tion has run out of time and ex­cus­es. The promised digi­ti­sa­tion will cer­tain­ly help but a com­mit­ment from the gov­ern­ment to work with the pri­vate sec­tor in get­ting the econ­o­my right is what is need­ed. The high marks the gov­ern­ment got for its ini­tial han­dling of the COVID19 cri­sis was be­cause it showed a will­ing­ness to work with and lis­ten to the pri­vate sec­tor and the tech­nocrats and it will do well to have a clos­er work­ing re­la­tion­ship with busi­ness, civ­il so­ci­ety and labour if it is to have any hope of a suc­cess­ful term.

The re­sults do not lie and its clear the PNM has lost ground among its sup­port­ers. While enough felt the need to vote against the UNC there seems to be a feel­ing on the ground, among many of the par­ty’s sup­port­ers, that they have been ig­nored for five years and the gov­ern­ment on­ly seemed to re­mem­ber them when its time for vot­ing.

In the heart­land of the PNM, from Laven­tille/Mor­vant to Laven­tille West to Port-of-Spain south and in the pock­ets of many oth­er ur­ban con­stituen­cies there is an un­der­bel­ly of hope­less­ness, a cul­ture of be­ing a vic­tim of the wider so­ci­ety and not part of the T&T we hope for.

It is a sit­u­a­tion that can­not be left for the econ­o­my to get bet­ter in two years. Row­ley has to keep his word to the young ur­ban black youths to work with them to find so­lu­tions so that their lives are not des­tined to be one of pover­ty or crime and those ar­eas must be lift­ed up by bet­ter op­por­tu­ni­ty, bet­ter in­fra­struc­ture and a cre­ation of hope.

I warned the coun­try that it can­not ig­nore the re­cent ri­ots that oc­curred in Port-of-Spain and even though the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty tried to con­vince us that there was a plot, as ex­pect­ed, there was not a shred of ev­i­dence pre­sent­ed, no ar­rests made and hopes that the coun­try would for­get about it and move on.

It may no longer be a news item, but the fact that the gov­ern­ment ig­nored for five years the ur­ban de­cay that took place and this from a par­ty, that as the re­sults show, gets it strength from ur­ban Trinidad.

So find­ing mean­ing­ful so­lu­tions to that prob­lem must be a pri­or­i­ty for the gov­ern­ment be­cause fail­ure has eco­nom­ic con­se­quences in terms of the cost of crime to every cit­i­zen and busi­ness op­er­at­ing in this coun­try.

There will be no hon­ey­moon pe­ri­od for this ad­min­is­tra­tion be­cause the im­pact of COVID-19 on the glob­al econ­o­my has been so dev­as­tat­ing that even the pow­er­ful Unit­ed States has been brought to its knees and T&T is liv­ing on bor­rowed time and bor­rowed mon­ey.

The gov­ern­ment has to move swift­ly to deal with the is­sue of crime that con­tin­ues to add risks to busi­ness and in­crease the cost of do­ing busi­ness.

For decades the en­er­gy sec­tor has been the dri­ving force be­hind the econ­o­my and things have changed dra­mat­i­cal­ly in the in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment.

Gas is ubiq­ui­tous and that has led to the soft­en­ing of glob­al nat­ur­al gas prices. This has had a dele­te­ri­ous ef­fect on earn­ings from At­lantic LNG. Crude re­mained over-sup­plied and even though OPEC and oth­er ma­jor pro­duc­ers have cut pro­duc­tion, the COVID-19 has caused a ma­jor fall in de­mand and led to the com­mod­i­ty hov­er­ing just above US$40 per bar­rel.

In T&T nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion re­mains short of what would be re­quired if all the petro­chem­i­cal plants come back up and its cur­tail­ment is a prob­lem the down­stream sec­tor has had to grap­ple with for the last six years.

You add to this the rel­a­tive­ly high costs of nat­ur­al gas in T&T com­pared to US shale gas and you see why the lo­cal petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor’s com­pet­i­tive­ness has been erod­ed. The gov­ern­ment has hired con­sul­tants to look at the en­tire val­ue chain and one hopes the work is com­plet­ed soon and work­able so­lu­tions found to pro­tect the pub­lic purse and the down­stream sec­tor.

T&T is fac­ing one of its most chal­leng­ing times and we need to en­sure that every­one is on board. It is why the prop­er­ty tax must be im­ple­ment­ed, the rev­enue au­thor­i­ty brought on stream and cit­i­zens and busi­ness­es pay their tax­es.

The Gov­ern­ment must ad­dress pen­sion re­form and health re­form. Trans­fers and sub­si­dies must be ra­tio­nalised and the is­sue of the de­clin­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion rate in the econ­o­my ad­dressed.

We need the gov­ern­ment to make the fun­da­men­tal changes that will make this econ­o­my more ef­fi­cient, that will lead to in­vest­ments in agri­cul­ture, tech­nol­o­gy, tourism and cul­ture as we move to di­ver­si­fy away from en­er­gy, while max­imis­ing the per­for­mance of the en­er­gy sec­tor.

We need big, achiev­able vi­sions for the coun­try which will be pur­sued even if it is for 15 to 20 years.

The Prime Min­is­ter has a hard task of lead­ing a di­vid­ed coun­try to­wards na­tion­al goals and the first thing he has to do is ap­point a new Fi­nance Min­is­ter who must not be Colm Im­bert.

The se­lec­tion of a Cab­i­net is the pre­rog­a­tive of the Prime Min­is­ter but be sure Dr Row­ley, if you make the er­ror of re­turn­ing with Mr Im­bert you will make an al­ready hard task seem in­sur­mount­able.