The ques­tion to be an­swered is how are the crit­i­cal eco­nom­ic and so­cial re­quire­ments of Trinidad and To­ba­go to be achieved in the elec­tion year up ahead? As out­lined by UWI econ­o­mist Pro­fes­sor Roger Ho­sein, the chal­lenges of the im­me­di­ate con­sti­tute what he refers to as the “eco­nom­ic tri­an­gle” - the rapid de­ple­tion of net for­eign ex­change re­serves, which high­light the for­eign ex­change man­age­ment and ex­ter­nal debt sus­tain­abil­i­ty; the ur­gent need for eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion; the ris­ing mur­der lev­els and crime in gen­er­al; and the de­clin­ing labour force.

Tak­en to­geth­er as Pro­fes­sor Ho­sein analysed the sit­u­a­tion in yes­ter­day’s T&T Guardian, “these in­ter-con­nect­ed trends of­fer crit­i­cal in­sights in­to the chal­lenges fac­ing T&T” in the com­ing year. How­ev­er, this tri­ad of prob­lems is not new and has been pro­nounced up­on by econ­o­mists, po­lit­i­cal thinkers and even the man in the street for decades. Yet, the re­al­i­ty as it has un­fold­ed, is that the two ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties have not been able to con­quer those chal­lenges. There are those who will ar­gue that there have been no re­al at­tempts to fix the prob­lems.

The is­sue for the na­tion, be­yond mere­ly seek­ing an­swers from the ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties, then, is how to fo­cus their at­ten­tion on these re­al is­sues as op­posed to nar­row par­ty mat­ters.

That is more so now that the ear­ly sig­nals from the agen­das of the two ma­jor par­ties have shown their con­stant­ly re­cur­ring favourite elec­tion is­sues: How to find ways and means to fur­ther di­vide the elec­torate along racial lines to their ben­e­fit; and how the Op­po­si­tion UNC can seek to con­vince sig­nif­i­cant por­tions of the elec­torate to be­lieve that the un­palat­able and un­work­able al­liance of a string of par­ties can work this time around, when the ex­pe­ri­ence of the past can be in­struc­tive and when there is even less sub­stance to the lat­est coali­tion.

What all of the above does is to present the gen­er­a­tional chal­lenge anew to the elec­torate of 2025. As has been the case over the last 40-plus years, the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty rests square­ly on the non-aligned, those who have not drunk from the cup of en­tic­ing syrup of un­think­ing par­ty pol­i­tics to the ex­clu­sion of all oth­er pos­si­ble so­lu­tions for the po­lit­i­cal health of them­selves and the na­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

But the chal­lenge does not rest on­ly with the un­aligned mem­bers of so­ci­ety, but with por­tions of those Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress and Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment vot­ers, not those who are tied hand and foot with the par­ties and their lead­ers, but those who have to make choic­es be­tween vot­ing by in­stinct and or choos­ing the less­er of the two bad main op­tions. A peo­ple’s agen­da, pro­mot­ed by sig­nif­i­cant opin­ion mak­ers and ex­posed through the me­dia, is what is need­ed amongst oth­er op­tions. The es­sen­tial point is that the peo­ple have got to come on stage in a man­ner where they can im­pact the de­ci­sion-mak­ing by oth­ers.