Mick­ela Pan­day

Gov­ern­ments spend a great deal of time telling the pub­lic what they have done. They speak of leg­is­la­tion passed, meet­ings held, con­fer­ences at­tend­ed and an­nounce­ments made. Cit­i­zens ask a much sim­pler ques­tion: Has my life im­proved? That is the on­ly mea­sure of gov­ern­ment that ul­ti­mate­ly mat­ters.

The first year of any ad­min­is­tra­tion is of­ten de­scribed as its hon­ey­moon pe­ri­od. It is the pe­ri­od dur­ing which a new­ly elect­ed gov­ern­ment en­joys its great­est po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal, its strongest pub­lic good­will and the widest man­date to de­liv­er the change it promised. Cit­i­zens un­der­stand that no gov­ern­ment in­her­its a per­fect coun­try and they are pre­pared to give a new ad­min­is­tra­tion time to im­ple­ment its agen­da.

But pa­tience can­not be­come a sub­sti­tute for progress.

Af­ter more than a year in of­fice, every gov­ern­ment must be­gin to an­swer for re­sults rather than in­ten­tions.

The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go do not ex­pe­ri­ence gov­ern­ment through Cab­i­net notes or press re­leas­es. They ex­pe­ri­ence it at the su­per­mar­ket, where the gro­cery bill con­tin­ues to climb. They ex­pe­ri­ence it when an­oth­er busi­ness de­cides to close its doors or post­pone ex­pan­sion be­cause con­fi­dence has giv­en way to un­cer­tain­ty. They ex­pe­ri­ence it when for­eign ex­change re­mains dif­fi­cult to ob­tain, when wa­ter fails to reach their homes, when roads and drainage con­tin­ue to de­te­ri­o­rate, when med­ical ap­point­ments re­main months away and when traf­fic steals hours from fam­i­ly life every sin­gle day.

They ex­pe­ri­ence it most painful­ly when crime con­tin­ues to rob com­mu­ni­ties of their sense of se­cu­ri­ty. That is where gov­ern­ments earn their re­port card.

Across the coun­try, one hears the same frus­tra­tions re­peat­ed with re­mark­able con­sis­ten­cy. Cit­i­zens speak of feel­ing un­heard. They speak of unan­swered calls, in­ac­ces­si­ble rep­re­sen­ta­tives and the grow­ing be­lief that many elect­ed of­fi­cials be­came far less vis­i­ble af­ter Elec­tion Day than they were be­fore it.

Whether every crit­i­cism is jus­ti­fied is not the point. In a rep­re­sen­ta­tive democ­ra­cy, pub­lic con­fi­dence de­pends up­on cit­i­zens be­liev­ing that those elect­ed to serve them re­main ac­ces­si­ble, ac­count­able and con­nect­ed to the re­al­i­ties of every­day life.

Once those con­ver­sa­tions be­gin, they rarely re­main about pol­i­tics alone.

They be­come con­ver­sa­tions about sur­vival. About par­ents won­der­ing how they will af­ford an­oth­er school term. About young peo­ple who have done every­thing asked of them, yet still strug­gle to find mean­ing­ful em­ploy­ment. About en­tre­pre­neurs try­ing to keep busi­ness­es alive in an in­creas­ing­ly dif­fi­cult en­vi­ron­ment. About pen­sion­ers stretch­ing fixed in­comes that no longer stretch far enough. About fam­i­lies won­der­ing whether their chil­dren will in­her­it a coun­try of­fer­ing greater op­por­tu­ni­ty than the one they know to­day.

These are not iso­lat­ed com­plaints. They are warn­ing signs.

Gov­ern­ments are elect­ed for one fun­da­men­tal pur­pose: to im­prove the lives of the peo­ple they serve. Every­thing else, every pol­i­cy, every bud­get, every ap­point­ment and every pub­lic state­ment should be mea­sured against that sin­gle oblig­a­tion.

Has life be­come safer? Has it be­come more af­ford­able? Has it be­come eas­i­er to earn a liv­ing, build a busi­ness and raise a fam­i­ly? Has con­fi­dence re­turned? These are not op­po­si­tion ques­tions. They are na­tion­al ques­tions.

Every gov­ern­ment in­her­its chal­lenges. That is an un­avoid­able re­al­i­ty of pub­lic of­fice. But no gov­ern­ment is elect­ed mere­ly to cat­a­logue the fail­ures of its pre­de­ces­sor. It is elect­ed be­cause cit­i­zens be­lieve to­mor­row can be bet­ter than to­day. At some point, every ad­min­is­tra­tion must stop ask­ing to be judged by what it in­her­it­ed and start ac­cept­ing re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for what it has de­liv­ered.

That point has ar­rived.

Too much of our na­tion­al con­ver­sa­tion con­tin­ues to re­volve around blame, po­lit­i­cal the­atre and care­ful­ly chore­o­graphed pho­to op­por­tu­ni­ties.

Mean­while, too many cit­i­zens con­tin­ue to shoul­der the bur­den of ris­ing prices, strug­gling busi­ness­es, un­re­li­able pub­lic ser­vices, in­ad­e­quate in­fra­struc­ture and per­sis­tent in­se­cu­ri­ty. Peo­ple can­not build a fu­ture on ex­pla­na­tions. They can­not feed their fam­i­lies with promis­es. They can­not re­store con­fi­dence through slo­gans.

They need re­sults.

None of this is writ­ten in the hope that a gov­ern­ment will fail. Quite the op­po­site. Every cit­i­zen ben­e­fits when a gov­ern­ment suc­ceeds in im­prov­ing lives, strength­en­ing in­sti­tu­tions and cre­at­ing op­por­tu­ni­ty.

Hold­ing a gov­ern­ment to ac­count is not an act of hos­til­i­ty; it is an es­sen­tial part of democ­ra­cy. Gov­ern­ments should wel­come that scruti­ny be­cause it re­minds them whom they were elect­ed to serve.

The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go have shown re­mark­able re­silience. They have en­dured eco­nom­ic hard­ship, un­cer­tain­ty and dis­ap­point­ment be­fore. They are not ask­ing for mir­a­cles. They are ask­ing for lead­er­ship that lis­tens, lead­er­ship that is present and lead­er­ship that is judged not by its rhetoric but by its re­sults.

His­to­ry will judge every gov­ern­ment, but long be­fore his­to­ry does, the peo­ple will. Not by the speech­es it de­liv­ered. Not by the head­lines it gen­er­at­ed. Not by the pho­tographs it pub­lished or Tik­Tok videos.

But by whether, af­ter more than a year in of­fice, or­di­nary cit­i­zens can hon­est­ly an­swer one sim­ple ques­tion: am I bet­ter off to­day than when this gov­ern­ment took of­fice?

Mick­ela Pan­day Po­lit­i­cal Leader of the Pa­tri­ot­ic Front and At­tor­ney at Law