Chester Sam­bra­no

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front has re­leased its Gen­er­al Elec­tion man­i­festo out­lin­ing a $2.5 bil­lion in­vest­ment plan cen­tred on pub­lic safe­ty, sus­tain­able de­vel­op­ment, youth em­pow­er­ment, and eco­nom­ic di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion.

The plan promis­es a re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crime with­in 18 months.

It rules out new tax­es or bor­row­ing and com­mits to re­duc­ing the debt-to-GDP ra­tio from 75 per cent to 55 per cent by 2030. The doc­u­ment, ti­tled The Na­tion We De­serve: Built from the Ground Up, pro­pos­es re­al­lo­cat­ing 4.2 per cent of the na­tion­al $59 bil­lion bud­get to im­ple­ment a se­ries of ini­tia­tives grouped un­der nine core pil­lars.

The PF said the plan will be fund­ed through the re­al­lo­ca­tion of un­der­per­form­ing pro­grammes, en­force­ment of tax com­pli­ance, and the use of in­stru­ments such as di­as­po­ra bonds and en­er­gy wind­falls. A cen­tral com­po­nent of the man­i­festo is the Op­er­a­tion Safe Zone ini­tia­tive, a $250 mil­lion per year pro­gramme aimed at ad­dress­ing crime through a dual strat­e­gy of en­force­ment and pre­ven­tion.

Short-term mea­sures in­clude uni­fy­ing na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies un­der a sin­gle com­mand struc­ture, restor­ing po­lice pa­trol ca­pa­bil­i­ties by recharg­ing fleet cards, and re­plac­ing ex­pired pro­tec­tive gear. Long-term ac­tions in­clude the over­haul of the Wit­ness Pro­tec­tion Pro­gramme, the es­tab­lish­ment of fast-track crim­i­nal courts, and the in­tro­duc­tion of a dig­i­tal re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion plat­form, the Be­yond Bars Learn­ing Acad­e­my for in­car­cer­at­ed in­di­vid­u­als.

The par­ty an­tic­i­pates a sig­nif­i­cant re­duc­tion in vi­o­lent crime with­in 18 months, along with im­proved com­mu­ni­ty trust in law en­force­ment.

In re­sponse to a re­port­ed 24 per cent youth un­em­ploy­ment rate and per­sis­tent gen­der dis­par­i­ties, the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front pro­pos­es a $280 mil­lion per year hu­man cap­i­tal de­vel­op­ment agen­da.

Im­me­di­ate mea­sures in­clude the launch of a na­tion­al Skills-to-Jobs dig­i­tal plat­form to con­nect youth with ap­pren­tice­ships, a fu­ture-ready school cur­ricu­lum in ro­bot­ics and cod­ing pi­lot­ed in 50 schools, and a do­mes­tic vi­o­lence rapid-re­sponse mo­bile app with live track­ing and emer­gency ser­vices in­te­gra­tion.

Longer-term ini­tia­tives in­clude ex­pand­ed shel­ters for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence sur­vivors and part­ner­ships be­tween uni­ver­si­ties and glob­al tech firms.

To mit­i­gate de­pen­dence on the en­er­gy sec­tor, the man­i­festo pro­pos­es $800 mil­lion in ini­tia­tives to stim­u­late oth­er in­dus­tries. These in­clude the re­moval of VAT on over 20 lo­cal­ly man­u­fac­tured goods, a cost-of-liv­ing ad­just­ment for pub­lic sec­tor work­ers, and a cre­ative in­dus­tries fund to sup­port mu­sic, film, and de­sign start-ups.

The par­ty plans to de­vel­op agro-in­dus­tri­al zones fo­cused on crops like moringa, host three in­ter­na­tion­al sport­ing events, and in­tro­duce the Twin Is­land Gate­way cam­paign to boost tourism and in­vest­ment.

Ex­pect­ed out­comes in­clude a 7 per cent an­nu­al growth rate in non-en­er­gy GDP by 2026 and a min­i­mum of 25 per cent of gov­ern­ment con­tracts un­der $100,000 be­ing award­ed to small and medi­um-sized en­ter­pris­es.

The par­ty projects that 40 per cent of homes and busi­ness­es will be pow­ered by so­lar en­er­gy by 2030.

On hous­ing, it pro­pos­es end­ing the pub­lic hous­ing lot­tery sys­tem in favour of a “trans­par­ent, mer­it-based” al­lo­ca­tion mod­el.

In To­ba­go, the PF plans to work with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly to im­prove land ac­cess, ex­pand vo­ca­tion­al train­ing, and sup­port tourism de­vel­op­ment, all with­in ex­ist­ing na­tion­al bud­gets.

‘Bet­ter ex­pect­ed from Mick­ela’

Com­ment­ing on the man­i­festo, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said he ex­pect­ed bet­ter from Mick­ela Pan­day.

“There are very ac­tion­able, im­me­di­ate ac­tion­able items in the man­i­festo. Some of it al­ready ex­ists, which for me, a great deal of it al­ready ex­ists, which then caus­es me to ques­tion whether the per­sons who wrote the man­i­festo un­der­stood or have been in­volved in gov­er­nance and un­der­stands what gov­ern­ing a coun­try en­tailed. And while it does en­tail in the cur­rent scheme of things, sav­ing mon­ey is part of it, mak­ing mon­ey is al­so an as­pect...So it’s a mat­ter of, has the com­mit­tee or per­sons who wrote the man­i­festo re­al­ly do their re­search to come up with some­thing that is prac­ti­ca­ble and prag­mat­ic.”

Econ­o­mist and po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr In­dera Sage­wan said, “This man­i­festo has many ideas which are quite ap­peal­ing and if we ap­pre­ci­ate that this is a new par­ty with no track record then we must as­sess its con­tents on the ba­sis of the qual­i­ty of the of­fer­ings and not on old de­liv­ered or bro­ken promis­es.”

She said many of the of­fer­ings are not new, and mov­ing the econ­o­my more to­wards re­new­able en­er­gy is an im­per­a­tive.

“It doesn’t how­ev­er, share a vi­sion for re­vi­tal­is­ing the ex­ist­ing en­er­gy sec­tor. This is a se­ri­ous short­com­ing as we con­tin­ue to re­ly heav­i­ly on this sec­tor and will con­tin­ue to do so.

“Many of the ideas un­der di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion are al­so not new, but one can on­ly hope that a new par­ty will bring new ap­proach­es.”