Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­bag­o­ni­ans were promised a bet­ter life—but near­ly four years lat­er, Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) leader Wat­son Duke says they’re still job­less, land­less and fed up with bro­ken promis­es.

Speak­ing dur­ing the THA Bud­get de­bate yes­ter­day, Duke said vot­ers were promised jobs, hous­ing and a bet­ter qual­i­ty of life but in­stead are still un­em­ployed, in­fra­struc­ture is crum­bling, and ba­sic ser­vices are miss­ing.

“The peo­ple out­side are not con­cerned about num­bers,” Duke told the cham­ber.

“They are con­cerned about their liv­ing con­di­tions, the qual­i­ty of life they were promised, and the qual­i­ty of life they have achieved.”

He said the 2021 cam­paign was built on bread-and-but­ter is­sues - jobs, food, hous­ing, and dig­ni­ty -, but those promis­es have not ma­te­ri­alised.

“There is a mis­match,” Duke said.

“We cam­paigned on ‘Let we fix this.’ ... but they got ‘dis’—the dis­re­spect, the dis­tance, dis­ap­point­ment, dis­sat­is­fac­tion. Come, let we fix this—bread-and-but­ter is­sues. Man was hun­gry and we want­ed to let the dol­lars trick­le down.”

In­stead, Duke said the THA was still “grap­pling with get­ting it right” as the cur­rent term neared ex­pi­ra­tion.

“The bud­get is based on a plan to achieve some­thing and that plan should re­flect what peo­ple vot­ed for,” he said.

“But when I saw and read the bud­get state­ment, I recog­nised that we are no longer pur­su­ing that which we spoke of.”

Hold­ing up the print­ed bud­get doc­u­ment, Duke said it had noth­ing in it to ex­cite or re­as­sure work­ing-class To­bag­o­ni­ans or young pro­fes­sion­als.

“It is a re­hearsed dream,” he said.

The PDP de­feat­ed the PNM To­ba­go 14-1 in the THA De­cem­ber 6, 2021 elec­tion. Less than a year lat­er, how­ev­er, a ma­jor pub­lic fall­out be­tween Au­gus­tine and Duke led to the mass res­ig­na­tion of all 13 PDP as­sem­bly­men. They lat­er joined to­geth­er to form the TPP in 2023.

Mean­while, Mi­nor­i­ty Leader Kelvon Mor­ris al­so took aim at the ex­ec­u­tive, ac­cus­ing them of go­ing silent now that the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress is in charge of Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. He said they were once loud and ag­gres­sive un­der the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) but that en­er­gy is now gone—even though the re­cent Mid-year Bud­get Re­view on­ly gave To­ba­go $32 mil­lion in sup­ple­men­tary fund­ing.

“I say dis­re­spect­ful­ly but firm­ly to the Chief Sec­re­tary, the least I ex­pect from you, Mr Chief Sec­re­tary, and your sup­port­ers, is the same en­er­gy you all had for the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment un­der the PNM, when those pre­vi­ous al­lo­ca­tions were made,” Mor­ris said.

“Just keep that same en­er­gy. Just keep the same en­er­gy. Be­cause with friends like these… with friends like those that you are keep­ing in Trinidad, who needs en­e­mies?”

He ac­cused the THA Ex­ec­u­tive of of­fer­ing big speech­es and vague promis­es, while the re­al­i­ty on the ground re­mains un­changed.

“We must now ask what has this ad­min­is­tra­tion tru­ly de­liv­ered be­yond bro­ken promis­es and bud­getary il­lu­sions?” Mor­ris said.

“What have they de­liv­ered af­ter over $10 bil­lion spent by this As­sem­bly and noth­ing to show for it?”

He al­so de­scribed the bud­get as “an­oth­er round of an­nounce­ments, al­lo­ca­tions and ab­strac­tions.”

The THA has main­tained it will ac­cept noth­ing less than 5.9 per cent of the na­tion­al bud­get. Fi­nance Min­is­ter Dav­en­dranath Tan­coo has said the re­quest “will be con­sid­ered.”