DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­lo@guardian.co.tt

Two po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists agree that the Gov­ern­ment should fo­cus on di­ver­si­fy­ing the econ­o­my in their first 100 days in of­fice, even as they work on the mid-term Bud­get re­view, to find ways to de­liv­er on their many cam­paign promis­es.

To­mor­row will mark one month since Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Cab­i­net was sworn in fol­low­ing the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion. They will mark 100 days in of­fice on Au­gust 11.

The an­a­lysts al­so say the fail­ure to com­mence the first Par­lia­men­tary sit­ting af­ter the cer­e­mo­ni­al open­ing on May 23 was not the Gov­ern­ment drag­ging its feet but par for the course with a change in ad­min­is­tra­tion.

How­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath be­lieves there will be on­ly a few leg­isla­tive pro­pos­als that can be brought to Par­lia­ment be­fore the au­to­mat­ic re­cess in Ju­ly.

Ac­cord­ing to Par­lia­ment’s stand­ing or­ders, un­less there are ur­gent or ex­tra­or­di­nary rea­sons, the Low­er House will not sit from the first week in Ju­ly to the first week in Sep­tem­ber in any year.

“That is go­ing to be for­tu­nate for them, in that they will still get an­oth­er two months breath­ing time,” Ra­goonath said.

There is a laun­dry list of oth­er items that Dr Ra­goonath be­lieves Gov­ern­ment should pri­ori­tise, most of which should ad­dress re­duc­ing ex­pen­di­ture.

He praised the de­ci­sion to re­vise State prop­er­ty rentals, which Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar said cost tax­pay­ers $493 mil­lion last year alone. He added that au­dit­ing at State en­ter­pris­es such as the Wa­ter and Sew­er­age Au­thor­i­ty (WASA) was al­so a step in the right di­rec­tion, not­ing that this should oc­cur in tan­dem with the ap­point­ment of new state boards.

How­ev­er, he said he did not ex­pect a quick fix in ad­dress­ing T&T’s chal­lenges, though he could not say that the trade union move­ment felt the same.

“I am not one who ex­pect­ed that chang­ing gov­ern­ment overnight would have been drop­ping the mur­der rate, and the econ­o­my would have ... we would have had a sil­ver bul­let to stop crime. And so, as a cit­i­zen, you know, my ex­pec­ta­tions are not over­whelm­ing,” he said.

“With re­gard to the trade unions, I mean, some of them will be look­ing for the ten per cent raise in pay and so on and the Gov­ern­ment will have to fig­ure out how they’re go­ing to deal with that and how quick­ly they’re go­ing to deal with ne­go­ti­a­tions to all the out­stand­ing trade unions who are not yet set­tled for and still liv­ing on 2015 salaries. So, we have to mea­sure our ex­pec­ta­tions as to what could be done and how fast.”

Based on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) cam­paign promis­es, Ra­goonath fur­ther ex­pects Gov­ern­ment to lay the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port in Par­lia­ment at the ear­li­est con­ve­nience, as it would have been laid in April had Par­lia­ment con­vened. He al­so be­lieves con­ver­sa­tions sur­round­ing the restart of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery and To­ba­go au­ton­o­my will per­sist.

Both he and po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad sus­pect that oth­er promis­es, such as the in­tro­duc­tion of stand-your-ground leg­is­la­tion and fa­cil­i­tat­ing eas­i­er ac­cess to le­gal firearms, would al­so be among the first pieces of leg­is­la­tion to be pro­posed.

While Ra­goonath not­ed that the re­peal of the Trinidad and To­ba­go Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty, prop­er­ty tax and the de­mer­it points sys­tem may al­so be on the agen­da, he sus­pects it will not be tack­led un­til af­ter the UNC’s first three months in of­fice.

Ac­cord­ing to Ram­per­sad, home in­va­sion leg­is­la­tion will al­so be on the agen­da to tack­le crime. She be­lieves eco­nom­ic sta­bil­i­ty will be a main pri­or­i­ty with labour re­la­tions tak­ing cen­tre stage due to the Gov­ern­ment’s coali­tion with trade unions to fight the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“Giv­en the strength of labour and the vig­or­ous cam­paign there, they now have to meet the promis­es and the de­mands of the labour move­ment for some ten per cent in­crease in salary ... even if they can’t pay all now, they will pay some now and some lat­er when the gov­ern­ment earns some rev­enue,” Ram­per­sad said.

She said ad­dress­ing the for­eign ex­change cri­sis was al­so cru­cial to boost the econ­o­my and sug­gest­ed agri­cul­ture and the en­er­gy sec­tor will be the is­sues Gov­ern­ment will tack­le pri­mar­i­ly.

“Once they start do­ing that, the econ­o­my will bump back up. You will see the con­struc­tion in­dus­try al­so be­com­ing more vi­brant, it has been co­matose for a while.”

She added that em­ploy­ment op­por­tu­ni­ties are re­quired from the lev­el of those who grad­u­at­ed at the sec­ondary lev­el, un­der­grad and post-grad­uands.

“I think they’re very anx­ious to get some leg­is­la­tion in place to meet their man­date, be­cause they know the pop­u­la­tion will get very ag­i­tat­ed and anx­ious. I mean, since the very first week, peo­ple were call­ing them to ful­fil their promis­es, the pub­lic ser­vants and rem­e­dy work­ers are wait­ing on their salary in­crease and back­pay,” Ram­per­sad said.

Mean­while, Ra­goonath not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment had to craft a dis­tinct for­eign pol­i­cy agen­da and keep al­liances alive.

As for the fi­nal Cab­i­net line-up, both po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tists agree that the Prime Min­is­ter’s de­ci­sion to over­lap min­is­te­r­i­al roles is an at­tempt to en­sure bet­ter gov­er­nance. Ram­per­sad added that the sep­a­ra­tion of the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­istry in­to two is a great method to ad­dress this coun­try’s crime prob­lem.

She heaped sim­i­lar prais­es on the de­ci­sion to split the ed­u­ca­tion min­istry in­to two min­istries.