Joel Julien

The next gen­er­al elec­tion in this coun­try is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due next year—2020.

And so far, sev­er­al po­lit­i­cal par­ties have sig­nalled their in­ten­tion to con­test that gen­er­al elec­tion.

Even­tu­al­ly, each par­ty will present a man­i­festo de­clar­ing their in­ten­tions.

The Sun­day Guardian reached out to the var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal par­ties to find out what is the first is­sue they would tack­le if they were elect­ed in­to of­fice and how would they go about ad­dress­ing that is­sue.

We al­so asked what they felt are the three ma­jor is­sues that they need to be ad­dressed in this coun­try.

Here is what they had to say:

The or­der of the re­spons­es is the or­der in which the T&T Guardian re­ceived the replies from the var­i­ous par­ties.

“There are so many ‘first things’ that need ad­dress­ing in this bro­ken na­tion, but the top of the list has to be the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act specif­i­cal­ly with re­gards to re­mov­ing MPs from of­fice.

Noth­ing is an­tic­i­pat­ed to put the pow­er of the Par­lia­ment back in­to the hands of the vot­ing pub­lic like the right to fire and re­move from of­fice those who are ei­ther demon­stra­bly in­ca­pable of func­tion­ing as a rep­re­sen­ta­tive of the peo­ple or those in whom the elec­torate has lost trust.

Know­ing that those who vot­ed you in­to of­fice can re­move you should be more than enough im­pe­tus to get our elect­ed of­fi­cials func­tion­ing in the in­ter­est of those whose votes put them there, and as every­thing can be said to be a func­tion of the Par­lia­ment, this would be our first act as a gov­ern­ment.

TOP 3 is­sues: Job cre­ation, home­own­er­ship, fi­nan­cial ser­vices reg­u­la­tions for banks and in­sur­ance com­pa­nies to pro­tect cus­tomers.

“The first is­sue is get­ting the coun­try unit­ed and or­gan­ised to deal with prob­lems. No gov­ern­ment can tack­le the prob­lems by mak­ing state­ments ar­bi­trar­i­ly. Re­lat­ed to that is en­sur­ing that all the peo­ple in­volved in cor­rup­tion are brought to jus­tice. It would be about get­ting peo­ple in­volved in de­ci­sion mak­ing in gen­er­al, and all the is­sues hap­pen­ing that have to be tack­led. I don’t want to give out all the de­tails right now, some we will be re­leas­ing short­ly, I don’t want to re­veal any­thing more right now.”

TOP 3 is­sues: Crime and vi­o­lence, un­em­ploy­ment, and cre­at­ing sus­tain­able and eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty.

“A Pro­gres­sive gov­ern­ment will re­pair the Pub­lic Ser­vice, as many of our hard-work­ing men and women are un­der­val­ued, ex­ploit­ed and op­er­ate in poor work­ing con­di­tions with a lack of prop­er em­ploy­ee sup­port and re­mu­ner­a­tion. We will rec­ti­fy these is­sues while en­sur­ing that the lat­est tech­nol­o­gy is in­cor­po­rat­ed in every as­pect of gov­ern­ment ser­vices and that work­ers are up­skilled ac­cord­ing­ly, which will pro­vide job se­cu­ri­ty. On­ly then can we tru­ly de­mand more of pub­lic ser­vants, who, once op­er­at­ing ef­fi­cient­ly, can en­sure that poli­cies and projects are im­ple­ment­ed, di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion takes place and cit­i­zens’ needs are met.

“This ef­fi­cien­cy will lead to crime re­duc­tion, im­prove­ments in the ed­u­ca­tion and health sec­tors, pub­lic util­i­ties and trans­porta­tion ef­fi­cien­cy, prop­er en­vi­ron­men­tal man­age­ment, an im­proved qual­i­ty of life and sav­ings of bil­lions an­nu­al­ly.”

TOP 3 is­sues: Eco­nom­ic Di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion, con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form, greater re­spect for To­ba­go.

“The first is­sue that we would tack­le would be the econ­o­my. When deal­ing with the econ­o­my, there is no deny­ing or ig­nor­ing the fact that we are, and have been for a long time, an oil-based and now an oil/gas de­pen­dent econ­o­my. The Pa­tri­ot­ic Front be­lieves that we must con­tin­ue to so or­gan­ise that im­por­tant as­pect of our econ­o­my that it con­tributes to a bet­ter life for all our cit­i­zens and not just a few. At any giv­en time, what is done to re-or­gan­ise the oil/gas in­dus­try will de­pend on the ob­jec­tive sit­u­a­tion in an ever-chang­ing in­ter­na­tion­al en­vi­ron­ment.

“Hav­ing said that, there is need for an at­ti­tu­di­nal change, that oil/gas, will give us all the for­eign ex­change we need to buy from abroad any­thing we need, and it is there­fore not nec­es­sary to pro­duce any­thing else.

“We can no longer lim­it our­selves in this way. The re­al­i­ty is that fos­sil fu­els will in a short­er time than we think be­come ob­so­lete so we must get se­ri­ous about re­new­able en­er­gy and set up in­cen­tives for that.

“There is ur­gent need for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my, a sub­ject mat­ter we have talked a lot about, but about which we have done pre­cious lit­tle in the past.

“While we ac­cept there is need to use our pe­tro­le­um and gas as a base for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion of the econ­o­my by the in­tro­duc­tion of re­lat­ed down-stream in­dus­tries, we must be­gin to think out­side the box and look for di­ver­si­fi­ca­tion out­side the oil/gas in­dus­try, which must be di­rect­ed to pro­duc­ing what we need, com­bined with what we can pro­duce to sell on the in­ter­na­tion­al mar­ket.”

TOP 3 is­sues: Crime, ed­u­ca­tion and un­em­ploy­ment.

“The New Na­tion­al Vi­sion has iden­ti­fied nu­mer­ous is­sues faced by our cit­i­zens. The role of gov­ern­ment is to make the lives of cit­i­zens bet­ter. Crime jumps out as the ma­jor is­sue for many cit­i­zens. Safe­ty is a pre­req­ui­site for a rea­son­able stan­dard of liv­ing.

Crime has be­come more than just iso­lat­ed in­ci­dents. Crime has be­come a fix­ture in the psy­che of our cit­i­zens. Peo­ple no longer wish you a good time when you go out, they now say “be safe”, such is the psy­cho­log­i­cal strain.

The cost of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty, ju­di­cia­ry, and pris­ons, the loss of life, the in­con­ve­niences, etc, if cal­cu­lat­ed in dol­lars and cents, is phe­nom­e­nal. The qual­i­ty of life en­joyed by cit­i­zens is se­vere­ly ham­pered by crime.

In deal­ing with this is­sue, the New Na­tion­al Vi­sion if giv­en the re­spon­si­bil­i­ty of gov­er­nance plans to end gang war­fare and com­mu­ni­ty con­flicts.

“Me­di­a­tion, with time­ly en­force­ment by a re­ju­ve­nat­ed, re­formed po­lice ser­vice will set the stage for progress.

We plan to rein­spire com­mu­ni­ties with hope. Through cul­ture, sport, arts and eco­nom­ic em­pow­er­ment ini­tia­tives.

We will re­struc­ture the ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem, in­tro­duc­ing an em­pha­sis on ethics, morals, and val­ues to build the char­ac­ter of our youth.”

TOP 3 is­sues: Se­cu­ri­ty, ed­u­ca­tion and eco­nom­ics.