Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

Jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

One hun­dred days af­ter sweep­ing in­to pow­er in the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion, the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) is mark­ing a pe­ri­od of leg­isla­tive ac­tion, ear­ly re­forms, and a cau­tious but de­ter­mined start on its am­bi­tious cam­paign agen­da.

Led by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, the UNC se­cured 26 of 41 par­lia­men­tary seats in the elec­tion, end­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s decade-long grip on gov­ern­ment.

The vic­to­ry, hailed by sup­port­ers as a “turn­ing point,” has brought with it high pub­lic ex­pec­ta­tions for rapid change. Dur­ing an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, po­lit­i­cal sci­en­tist Dr In­di­ra Ram­per­sad urged cau­tion when as­sess­ing the pe­ri­od, not­ing the time since the elec­tion vic­to­ry has not been enough to achieve sig­nif­i­cant change.

“It would be dif­fi­cult, I think, for Gov­ern­ment to im­ple­ment any mea­sure, even in the short term, if we want to look at this as a seg­ment of a short term. Be­cause I would say a short term would be prob­a­bly nine months to a year in this case. How­ev­er, what I found in­ter­est­ing, and I think wel­come, is the trans­paren­cy and the ac­count­abil­i­ty that the Gov­ern­ment has dis­played in these 100 days. In that we are giv­en fre­quent feed­back as to what has been hap­pen­ing.”

On the back of a cam­paign slo­gan, “When UNC wins... Every­body wins,” Prime Min­is­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s first post-Cab­i­net an­nounce­ments in­clud­ed the re­peal of the T&T Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty Act, amend­ments to the Chil­dren’s Life Fund leg­is­la­tion, as well as the es­tab­lish­ment of a spe­cial com­mit­tee to pro­pose a “stand-your-ground” law to ad­dress home in­va­sions and oth­er leg­isla­tive mea­sures.

Oth­er leg­isla­tive amend­ments would al­so even­tu­al­ly fol­low, un­der­pin­ning the UNC’s com­mit­ment to re­form pro­grammes and im­prove gov­ern­ment ef­fi­cien­cy.

One of the Gov­ern­ment’s ma­jor acts came with­in the Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme, where over 300 con­trac­tors were ter­mi­nat­ed, af­fect­ing over 10,500 work­ers. There were al­so job cuts at the Un­em­ploy­ment Re­lief Pro­gramme and the Reaf­foresta­tion Pro­gramme.

Ad­dress­ing this, Ram­per­sad said, “I’m not averse to the re­struc­tur­ing, but they will have to put some mea­sures in place in the short run for this large num­ber of tem­po­rary em­ploy­ees that are out of work. Al­so, what­ev­er leg­is­la­tion they have to bring to re­duce the crime, they have to do that in the medi­um term. That can­not wait for long term. Some mea­sures have to be brought in the short term. This is ur­gent. This is crit­i­cal. This is cri­sis.”

Econ­o­mist Mar­i­ano Browne, speak­ing with Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, said a 100-day per­for­mance time­line, while crit­i­cal, was al­so con­strict­ing.

“To make a com­ment at this stage of the game as good, bad or in­dif­fer­ent is pre­ma­ture. If any­thing, we can say in the first 100 days they are siz­ing up the sit­u­a­tion be­fore any strong pol­i­cy an­nounce­ment is made.”

Some of the UNC’s high-pro­file cam­paign pledges have been ac­tioned.

Work has be­gun on re­open­ing the Chil­dren’s Hos­pi­tal, a long-stand­ing sym­bol of the par­ty’s so­cial pol­i­cy plat­form, and the Gov­ern­ment has reaf­firmed plans to restart op­er­a­tions at the state-owned oil com­pa­ny, Petrotrin, as part of a wider eco­nom­ic re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion strat­e­gy.

In his as­sess­ment of the pe­ri­od, econ­o­mist Dr Vaalmik­ki Ar­joon not­ed that the Gov­ern­ment in­her­it­ed a chal­leng­ing eco­nom­ic land­scape marked by years of de­cline. He said mea­sures aimed at curb­ing ex­ces­sive gov­ern­ment spend­ing and en­hanc­ing fis­cal trans­paren­cy across state en­ti­ties can im­prove in­vestor con­fi­dence.

“At least for now, we have seen, in my view, that they have hit the ground run­ning and so at this stage I do have some de­gree of cau­tious op­ti­mism.”

Dr Ar­joon al­so ref­er­enced the re­cent vis­it by In­dia Prime Min­is­ter Naren­dra Mo­di as among the ear­ly steps tak­en to safe­guard the coun­try’s econ­o­my.

“It has ba­si­cal­ly sig­nalled to us that the gate­way to In­dia is open to do busi­ness with them. That can pave the way for fu­ture strate­gic in­vest­ments, tech­nol­o­gy trans­fers and joint ven­tures with In­dia.”

The pe­ri­od has al­so seen the ap­point­ment of new Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Al­lis­ter Gue­var­ro and the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a State of Emer­gency.

Ac­cord­ing to crim­i­nol­o­gist Dr Randy Seep­er­sad, the moves align with the Prime Min­is­ter’s plan to make the coun­try safer in six months.

“There is ev­i­dence that things are be­ing done. The Gov­ern­ment has re­leased some of the things they plan to do re­lat­ing to crime and se­cu­ri­ty and they are all rea­son­able. It sug­gests to me that they are mak­ing head­way. I don’t ex­pect much in terms of ac­tion with­in 100 days be­cause a new gov­ern­ment com­ing in­to pow­er has to get their bear­ing and un­der­stand what they are work­ing with, but at least you see ev­i­dence of things be­ing done.”

He said while the Gov­ern­ment has rolled out sup­pres­sive crime mea­sures in its first 100 days, a more pre­ven­ta­tive ap­proach is need­ed in the weeks and months ahead.