As we inch closer to 60 years of independence, T&T finds itself in crisis. This crisis is not a result of a lack of resources, a lack of opportunity, or even a lack of possibilities, but rather a crisis of leadership at all levels of the society that risks future generations and could easily lead us into a failed-state situation.
If we are to be very honest, a large portion of the country feels trapped between two 70-plus-year-old political leaders who in a world that has changed so dramatically, even with the best will in the world, cannot take the country forward. This is even starker as we realise the talent pool available to both major political parties is limited, especially in a society that has seen so much brain drain and which is a small island with finite human resources.
It is why leadership is so important in getting us out of the morass we find ourselves in and giving hope to those who have more years ahead of them than behind them.
Look around, and you will see a country with institutions that are failing, a country less given to planning and all about knee-jerk reaction and smoke and mirrors.
Is anyone surprised that the CCTV cameras could not help the police in finding the driver that ran over and killed photographer Anthony Harris? Are you surprised that the Minister of National Security would then come and tell us the Government is moving swiftly to ensure the cameras are working and to buy new ones?
Minister Fitzgerald Hinds, I know you and your colleagues in politics depend heavily on the fact that so much is going on, and so much bad news happens in this society that people have forced themselves to forget the bad things that happen, if only for their own mental health. But since 2019 it was identified that more than half of the cameras in the country were not working. Contracts were terminated and while the National Security apparatus will not tell you the truth, one can reasonably assume that we live in a society where the tens of millions invested in CCTV systems are going down the drain because this is a country given to buying things and not maintaining them.
Minister, these things have a serious impact on confidence and the economy and show that the Government is failing in its role–Its role of protecting the country and providing the opportunity for the population to succeed.
It is former US President Barack Obama who said, “The role of government has never been to plan every detail or dictate every outcome. At its best, the Government has simply knocked away barriers to opportunity and laid the foundation for a better future. Our people–with all their drive and ingenuity–always end up building the rest.”
I have advocated in this space, the need for the Government to focus on what its role is and not be confused by it as they try to compete with the private sector.
An example of this is its management of the economy. Government must put in place fiscal policies that encourage growth, which lead to disciplined spending of the public’s purse while providing the infrastructure that will enable growth.
Government has no role in trying to compete with the private sector, saddling the country with scores of failing state enterprises, and adding layers of bureaucracy that only serve to make it more challenging to do business.
Governments, not just this administration, have failed the country. Remember water for all? Remember the plan in 1993 to once and for all fix flooding in Port-of-Spain? The promise to deliver the Point Fortin Highway by last December? These are not impossible things to solve, they require focus and leadership to get done.
The inability to solve the problems at WASA, including the approval of projects by the utilities, hurt those investments and the delay increases costs. Even the Government’s housing projects have suffered at the hands of WASA and T&TEC, although the truth is T&TEC is much better run.
The continued lack of leadership by governments in encouraging the citizens to believe that they can pay peppercorn rates for things like water, heavily subsidised fuel and even health care is not sustainable. It is why we have wasted so much of our energy rents on transfers and subsidies, hardly saving for the future, little investment in our infrastructure and building a modern economy and our over-reliance on a dying sector.
It is why the Minister of Energy could boast to the Geological Society of T&T that he remains steadfast that oil and gas are going nowhere. It is why he could spend so much time in his speech reminding professionals that he travelled to major capitals to meet with energy executives, and even that he met with US Special Envoy John Kerry. His seeming newness, a kind of never-see-come-see approach is not what the country needs, it needs a minister who can seize the moment, who can see that the energy sector remains in decline, who can oversee the transition that is happening, who can provide leadership to improve the efficiency of decision-making in his own ministry and in the state sector. The country needs a Minister of Energy who, like Gary Sobers, knows how to bat, bowl and field and not like Richard Gabriel who you will always get out hooking.
We need leadership because it is the private sector that will move the country forward. Give them the opportunity to do so, work with them, find ways of partnering through PPPs and come out of things like running a port.
Prof Ricardo Hausmann of Harvard Kennedy School said in a 2015 article that successful countries do not grow by making more of the same. They change what they are good at. They become good at a more diverse set of industries, and these industries tend to be increasingly complex.
He added that the opportunities for diversification and the obstacles that impede it vary from country to country, and not all industries are equally good as stepping stones to more diversification opportunities.
“So I believe that growth policies need to be focused on identifying new diversification opportunities and having an activist government trying to solve the coordination failures that these face. It is not about substituting for the market but solving the market failures associated with chicken-and-egg problems that are ubiquitous in this area.
“The jobs of the future will be in these new industries directly and in the multiplier effect in the rest of the economy that these industries will have by demanding inputs from others or through the local spending of the incomes that they generate. For many countries in the developing world, growth is limited by the size and dynamism of the industries that can sell goods and services abroad.
“This requires these industries to be competitive enough so that foreigners are willing to buy from them, given that they have so many other options to buy from. The speed at which these activities grow eventually determines the speed at which the whole economy grows.”
We have to diversify our economy. We must know that it will not be easy, but it will be impossible without astute leadership.