As T&T charts its way towards constitutional reform, this signals a fresh start for the country especially regarding economic development, and it begins with the communities, believes economist Vanus James.
The move to examine the existing constitutional laws comes 48 years after the last significant change was made.
At a post-Cabinet press conference at Whitehall a few weeks ago, Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley announced Cabinet’s approval of the appointment of an advisory committee to formulate terms of reference for a national consultation on constitutional reform.
James said constitutional reform must be linked to economic development, as he explained that there are three fundamental forces that jointly drive economic development as measured by sustainable improvement in real output per capita:
(i) ↓Improvement of the economic structure, as measured by the share of capital in economic output, with an elasticity around 2.4;
(ii) ↓Improvement in the quality of institutions, with an elasticity around 1.9; and
(iii) ↓Improvement of knowledge, skills and the capacity to innovate, with an elasticity around 1.5.
What is T&T’s current national report card?
After six decades of post-independence development efforts fuelled by several oil booms, more than 68 per cent of the country’s labour force is undereducated by national standards, James said.
Also, he noted that the T&T economy is still undercapitalised and externally propelled, underutilising its potential to grow its savings rate and expand its supply of capital.
“Our standard of living has crept along in real terms at just about two per cent per year, from about $4,800 in 1960 to about $16,000 today, nearly 70 per cent behind the average of the developed economies. The Tobago economy has virtually collapsed, even before the disastrous spill of hydrocarbons onto its shores. Gang-related and financially motivated criminal activity have skyrocketed into a national scourge, with many of the foot soldiers originating in our disadvantaged communities. Emigration of skilled workers has been correspondingly very high,” James said.
He advised that T&T therefore, must grow its real output per capita sustainably at about 5 per cent per year, adding that “if we are clever” this can be achieved. It all starts with institutional upgrade and empowerment of communities for community development.
This, James believes, will bring along both the upgrade of the structure of the economy and improvement of T&T’s capacity to innovate.
“No post-Independence constitution saw our communities, leaving us with dysfunctional village councils unfit for purpose. This was a massive mistake. The consequence? Across the country, many communities have been excluded from development opportunities, neglected, and oppressed by the way the society and its governance structures are organised. This has been a substantial barrier to national success in eliminating undereducation, containing and preventing crime and emigration, and raising living standards while addressing environmental sustainability,” James explained.
While lauding the efforts of Rowley to put the country on a path to constitutional reform, James maintained that specific development initiatives are needed in communities to underwrite national success, especially with respect to matters such as crime prevention, crime reduction and social safety.
He noted that communities normally develop through:
• ↓Self-interested, collaborative investment and work that includes civic leaders, entrepreneurs, activists and involved citizens;
• ↓Professionals with special relevant knowledge, skills and self-confidence who are dedicated to improving various aspects of community life, and to making their communities stronger and more resilient in social and economic terms; and
• ↓Use of improving opportunities to inform and influence decisions made elsewhere that affect their development efforts.
While everyone lives in communities at the same time, these space do not come empty-handed as they all bring varied endowments of resources and skills, including professionals with special knowledge: community social workers, specialists in child and adult education, specialists in sports, music and other creative industry, specialists in youth development and crime prevention, health care specialists, environmental education specialists, local economic development planners, community project design, financing and implementation, and the like, James outlined.
“Community members are the ultimate experts in their own lives and circumstances, and they can determine the directions and dimensions of community integration into the development process. Furthermore, if well organised, communities can fill gaps by trading with each other,” he added.
However, he emphasised that each community must be empowered to use its available capabilities and skills to arrive at and implement a well thought out feasible plan that clearly links activities with objectives and indicates responsibilities, time-frames and resources required, and methods of performance monitoring, evaluation, with regular reporting back to stakeholders.
Capacity-building, James said, will be needed for the planning and implementation exercises.
He recommended that a well thought out feasibility and sustainable plan will need to be based on: (i) a comprehensive community asset inventory developed with involvement of the entire community; and (ii) clever community collaboration to identify the best pathway to the future – the way to build assets that increase the capacity of residents to improve their quality of life and to address the historical causes of inequality and disadvantage.
“Each community has ‘process’ people and ‘action’ people, so the planning and implementation process must be designed with a variety of ways of enabling widespread participation as well as with methods of conflict management that address problems in an open, honest, and timely manner,” James explained, adding that the plan would have to be easily understood by community members, and so must be supported by tools such as simplified information brochures, hearings and public education programmes.
He noted that to successfully undertake and implement such an agenda, clear provisions are needed in the national constitution to challenge persistent inequity and ensure fairness for all communities.
“Provisions are needed to empower each community to act as a joint-decision-making unit as well as to adequately influence decisions that affect the community but are made at higher levels of government. The provisions amount to a bundle of community rights to self-determination. To begin with, each community must be guaranteed a fair and predictable foundation budgetary provision – annual access to an equitable share of the national (or local) budget for capital expenditures aimed at community development,” James suggested.
Further, he said when using those resources, each must have the right to set and achieve its own development objectives; to proper mechanisms of collective action; and, to effective public education designed to enable members to participate in the joint decision-making process, including petitioning Government effectively at all levels.
Practically, James further suggested to ensure that communities have the right to influence decisions made in Tobago, it must be redesigned based on the principles of legislative oversight of the executive, joint decision-making, and the rule of law, including access to an elected Senate with responsibility to address the spatial equity of access to development opportunity across Tobago.
Noting that the same applies to every local government body in Trinidad, James added that in turn, the Government must be similarly redesigned to ensure that all stakeholders can adequately represent their interests when decisions are made at the national level that affect them and their communities.
Stating that the Constitution of T&T was never designed as such a tool of liberation and development, James said however, this has always been part of the national dream, and it exploded into the demands of 1970.
“Now, we have a chance to make it a reality,” he added.