DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

New­ly ap­point­ed Fi­nance Min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul yes­ter­day pledged that his tenure will not bring fi­nan­cial hard­ship to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Dhan­paul, who pre­vi­ous­ly served as a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the Fi­nance Min­istry, has worked with eight fi­nance min­is­ters across suc­ces­sive ad­min­is­tra­tions since 1991. He al­so re­cent­ly held the po­si­tion of High Com­mis­sion­er to the Unit­ed King­dom. Yes­ter­day, he of­fi­cial­ly re­placed Colm Im­bert, who served as Fi­nance Min­is­ter since 2015.

Fol­low­ing his swear­ing-in at Pres­i­dent’s House, Dhan­paul im­me­di­ate­ly dis­played a dif­fer­ent lead­er­ship style from his pre­de­ces­sor, who large­ly re­strict­ed di­rect me­dia ac­cess by block­ing jour­nal­ists from con­tact­ing him.

In a qui­et but no­table ges­ture, Dhan­paul shared his con­tact in­for­ma­tion with re­porters and per­son­al­ly shook their hands af­ter the in­ter­view.

He al­so made a bold de­c­la­ra­tion about the eco­nom­ic di­rec­tion un­der his lead­er­ship.

“You have to make tough de­ci­sions as a min­is­ter of fi­nance. You would like to not make tough de­ci­sions. What I would tell you as a, I don’t want to say a promise to the coun­try, but the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go, there will be no hard­ships. Not un­der my watch. That is not go­ing to hap­pen.”

Dhan­paul al­so dis­missed any plans to im­pose aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures.

“Eco­nom­ic poli­cies, you don’t have to put pain on peo­ple nec­es­sar­i­ly. We are not go­ing through aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures. At least I have no in­ten­tion of im­ple­ment­ing any aus­ter­i­ty mea­sures to lit­er­al­ly pun­ish the pop­u­la­tion. It’s as sim­ple as that. We’re go­ing to keep it sim­ple. We’re go­ing to keep it above board. We’re go­ing to keep it with in­tegri­ty and get the job done.”

The min­is­ter iden­ti­fied eco­nom­ic growth—par­tic­u­lar­ly in the non-en­er­gy sec­tor—as his top pri­or­i­ty, be­liev­ing it will help re­solve crit­i­cal is­sues, in­clud­ing the for­eign ex­change cri­sis.

De­spite the mag­ni­tude of the task ahead, Dhan­paul ad­mit­ted he was sur­prised to be ap­point­ed. He al­so stat­ed that he has no in­ten­tion of hold­ing on­to pow­er if he is no longer ef­fec­tive in the role.

“I think it’s a very thank­less job of be­ing min­is­ter of fi­nance in Trinidad and To­ba­go. You can’t win, but you have to do your best. And some­thing I could tell the pop­u­la­tion, I promise to do my best. And when my best stops be­ing good enough, I know when to leave.”

The new Fi­nance Min­is­ter de­clined to com­ment on how he plans to mend the strained re­la­tion­ship be­tween his min­istry and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s of­fice. How­ev­er, he em­pha­sised the im­por­tance of pro­fes­sion­al­ism in such in­ter­ac­tions.

“I have worked with many au­di­tors gen­er­al over the years, and we have had fan­tas­tic re­la­tion­ships—pro­fes­sion­al­ly, very cor­dial. And I don’t see why it should change now. I’ve worked with many of them.”

Ten­sions be­tween the two of­fices arose in April last year when the Fi­nance Min­istry sub­mit­ted amend­ed pub­lic ac­counts to ex­plain a re­port­ed $2.6 bil­lion un­der­es­ti­ma­tion in rev­enue. Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass ini­tial­ly re­fused to ac­cept the late sub­mis­sion, cit­ing the need for le­gal ad­vice, be­fore ul­ti­mate­ly re­view­ing the doc­u­ments. How­ev­er, she lat­er sub­mit­ted her orig­i­nal re­port to Par­lia­ment, stat­ing her team was un­able to rec­on­cile the fig­ures.

Le­gal dis­putes be­tween the par­ties are on­go­ing, though Cab­i­net re­cent­ly de­cid­ed to scrap as­pects of the in­ves­ti­ga­tion re­lat­ed to Ram­dass.

For­mer T&T High Com­mis­sion­er, PM con­demn UK visa re­quire­ment

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has strong­ly crit­i­cised the UK’s de­ci­sion to im­pose a visa re­quire­ment on Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­als, call­ing the pol­i­cy “un­jus­ti­fied.”

De­spite his frus­tra­tion, Young as­sured that the gov­ern­ment is ac­tive­ly work­ing to ad­dress the UK’s con­cerns over an in­crease in refugee re­quests.

“We don’t agree with it. We think it is a pol­i­cy that is not jus­ti­fied in the cir­cum­stances, and we will con­tin­ue to have re­spect­ful di­a­logue with them. We will con­tin­ue to have a lot of con­ver­sa­tion with them, and I am go­ing to put what­ev­er pres­sures I can to ask them to take a clos­er look at it. We have al­so of­fered to put cer­tain things in place that we be­lieve will be able to mit­i­gate their con­cerns. So, let’s wait and see how it goes.”

Mean­while, Dhan­paul said the visa re­quire­ment came as a sur­prise to his of­fice. He fur­ther de­nied any pri­or com­mu­ni­ca­tion from UK au­thor­i­ties re­gard­ing T&T na­tion­als seek­ing refuge, stat­ing that while dis­cus­sions took place in Lon­don, the UK’s Home Of­fice on­ly pro­vid­ed gen­er­al sta­tis­tics with­out spe­cif­ic de­tails.

“It’s dis­ap­point­ing. To me, per­son­al­ly, it was very dis­ap­point­ing be­cause, as I said, and I re­peat, we were am­bushed.”

Dhan­paul sug­gest­ed that an in­crease in refugee claims may have been due to trav­ellers try­ing to en­ter the UK be­fore the Elec­tron­ic Trav­el Au­tho­ri­sa­tion (ETA) sys­tem came in­to ef­fect in Jan­u­ary.

Mean­while, he backed for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr. Kei­th Row­ley’s call to re­place the Privy Coun­cil with the Caribbean Court of Jus­tice as T&T’s high­est court.

“Well, I’m not a lawyer, but we are an in­de­pen­dent Re­pub­li­can state, right? And there’s no need for us to be at the Privy Coun­cil. That’s my opin­ion as a layper­son.”

Young al­so ad­dressed con­cerns over re­cent US for­eign pol­i­cy di­rec­tives, em­pha­sis­ing that the gov­ern­ment re­mains in ac­tive dis­cus­sions. He sug­gest­ed that the poli­cies may not specif­i­cal­ly tar­get Cari­com na­tions.

“It is very pos­si­ble that that is not di­rect­ed at us here in the Cari­com re­gion. But yes, as I said yes­ter­day (Sun­day) very clear­ly, I will fight for Trinidad and To­ba­go and I will con­tin­ue to do so. I will pro­tect Trinidad and To­ba­go’s sov­er­eign­ty.”

When asked if he would be will­ing to have his US visa re­voked in protest—sim­i­lar to Bar­ba­dos Prime Min­is­ter Mia Mot­t­ley’s stance in de­fence of Cu­ba’s med­ical pro­gramme—Young de­clined to com­ment.

On Feb­ru­ary 25, US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio an­nounced new visa re­stric­tions tar­get­ing Cuban of­fi­cials and any­one deemed “com­plic­it” in Cu­ba’s for­eign med­ical pro­grammes. The re­stric­tions ex­tend to their im­me­di­ate fam­i­ly mem­bers as well.