At the last Mon­day night fo­rum of the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, its po­lit­i­cal leader, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, made some pro­pos­als and promis­es that are sure to be pop­u­lar with the elec­torate, but which re­quire more de­tails and ex­pla­na­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said if her par­ty forms the gov­ern­ment af­ter the next gen­er­al elec­tions, which are due by next year, the UNC “will not in­crease wa­ter and elec­tric­i­ty rates in this eco­nom­ic cli­mate.”

She said un­der her lead­er­ship, the gov­ern­ment will al­so not im­ple­ment the prop­er­ty tax and she does not sup­port the Gov­ern­ment’s four per cent of­fer to pub­lic ser­vants.

“We call on the Gov­ern­ment to re­scind that and give the work­ers a high­er in­crease,” she said.

Quite in­ter­est­ing­ly, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said if her par­ty wins the next gen­er­al elec­tion, it “will move to low­er tax­es. We are against the in­tro­duc­tion of any new tax­es.”

In ef­fect, Per­sad-Bisses­sar is propos­ing to con­tin­ue the ex­ist­ing bil­lion-dol­lar sub­si­dies on the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty and the Trinidad and To­ba­go Elec­tric­i­ty Com­mis­sion, while in­creas­ing the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s four per cent of­fer to pub­lic ser­vants. And she in­sists she will move to low­er tax­es and will not im­ple­ment any new tax­es.

She al­so said a UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion “would cre­ate 50,000 new jobs, with­out a sin­gle new tax” and pro­posed to make qual­i­ty hous­ing more af­ford­able and ac­ces­si­ble to young peo­ple.

The ob­vi­ous ques­tion that aris­es is this: if a UNC gov­ern­ment plans to in­crease the coun­try’s re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, while not in­creas­ing the tax bur­den on the pop­u­la­tion, how would her ad­min­is­tra­tion fund what is sure to be a widen­ing fis­cal deficit?

Does she pro­pose to fund fu­ture po­ten­tial fis­cal deficits by con­tin­u­ing the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s pol­i­cy of bor­row­ing monies on the lo­cal and in­ter­na­tion­al cap­i­tal mar­kets?

Does she pro­pose to con­tin­ue the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion’s ac­cess­ing of the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund, when­ev­er en­er­gy rev­enues de­cline?

Will a fu­ture UNC gov­ern­ment sell state as­sets to pay pub­lic ser­vants, fund the trans­fers and sub­si­dies al­lo­ca­tion, which ac­counts for more than half of re­cur­rent ex­pen­di­ture, and ser­vice the coun­try’s debt?

For the UNC leader’s pro­pos­als to be tak­en se­ri­ous­ly, she must tell the pop­u­la­tion, in de­tail, how her gov­ern­ment would fund the ad­di­tion­al ex­pen­di­ture that her man­i­festo pro­pos­als/promis­es en­tail. To do oth­er­wise would be ir­re­spon­si­ble and would be an at­tempt to take ad­van­tage of sim­ple-mind­ed Trin­bag­o­ni­ans, who are on­ly in­ter­est­ed in what their coun­try can do for them.

It would al­so be un­ac­cept­able for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to claim that bil­lions of dol­lars would be saved by crack­ing down on waste and cor­rup­tion. With re­spect, the coun­try has heard that one be­fore.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader’s pack­age of elec­tion good­ies must be viewed in the con­text of Min­is­ter of Fi­nance Colm Im­bert’s June 3 af­fi­davit in the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty (TTRA) mat­ter, which stat­ed that “the next three years will be very chal­leng­ing for the coun­try from a rev­enue per­spec­tive.”

Im­bert not­ed that if the TTRA is not ful­ly op­er­a­tional in the short­est pos­si­ble time, “the Gov­ern­ment will soon be faced with very dif­fi­cult choic­es in terms of main­tain­ing cur­rent lev­els of sub­si­dies, grants, free ser­vices and so­cial pro­grammes.”

This coun­try de­serves sober and re­al­is­tic re­flec­tions on its cur­rent eco­nom­ic po­si­tion and not wild and cyn­i­cal pro­pos­als with no con­crete idea of how these would be fund­ed.