All elec­tions re­volve around the ques­tion, “Why should you sup­port us and not the oth­er par­ty?” Even when vot­ers do not watch the broad­casts, they pay at­ten­tion to the com­men­tary gen­er­at­ed in the search for some mean­ing. PR ex­perts use slo­gans in po­lit­i­cal cam­paigns to cap­ture at­ten­tion. A slo­gan’s suc­cess de­pends on how ef­fi­cient­ly it helps vot­ers ex­plain their pref­er­ence, to oth­ers and to them­selves. In this 2019 lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion the PNM is us­ing “Get­ting the job done”, whilst the UNC’s slo­gan is “Work­na­tion”.

But this is a lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion in name on­ly. This is a plat­form for the 2020 elec­tion which will be ear­li­er than legal­ly re­quired. Hence the theme “Get­ting the job done” sug­gest­ing that progress is be­ing made on all fronts by the PNM. It is zip­py. As pol­i­cy, it is emp­ty. What are the achieve­ments ei­ther at the lo­cal or cen­tral gov­ern­ment lev­els?

If there were se­ri­ous de­vel­op­ments we ought to have heard about them. In­stead the Plan­ning Min­is­ter’s in­voked St. Michael’s pro­tec­tion tout­ing the use of a co­coyea broom to sweep away evil spir­its. A fine ex­am­ple of 21st cen­tu­ry na­tion build­ing! Not to be out done, Mr. Im­bert won­dered if Dr. Row­ley was in his “right mind” to ap­point him Fi­nance Min­is­ter. Not mad, des­per­ate; there was no one with rel­e­vant ex­pe­ri­ence in cab­i­net, so Dr. Row­ley gave the job to a ri­val who could be sac­ri­ficed if things went wrong.

But these are dis­trac­tions, po­lit­i­cal en­ter­tain­ment. In the process, clo­sure of the Yara plant and its im­pli­ca­tions for the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor were by­passed. All busi­ness will ex­pe­ri­ence chal­lenges and it is im­por­tant to un­der­stand when your time has passed. Af­ter 16 months of ne­go­ti­a­tion, Yara an­nounced that there was no prospect of ar­riv­ing at an eco­nom­ic gas price. If Yara was in­ef­fi­cient how does the coun­try en­sure that oth­er plants rein­vest to re­main com­pet­i­tive?

The fu­ture of the petro­chem­i­cal sec­tor is an un­com­fort­able chal­lenge. New­er plants are be­ing built where gas is cheap­er and more plen­ti­ful. T&T’s nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion is in­suf­fi­cient to meet ex­ist­ing ca­pac­i­ty and pro­duc­tion will de­cline in 2020 and 2021 be­fore it gets bet­ter in late 2022. Fur­ther com­pli­cat­ing mat­ters, petro­chem­i­cal prices have al­so de­clined. The T&T nat­ur­al gas mod­el may work in those coun­tries with cheap­er and more plen­ti­ful gas like Ghana. That mod­el can no longer work for T&T.

In short, the econ­o­my will be in se­ri­ous dif­fi­cul­ty over the next two years be­fore the new finds/ projects come on stream, if they are com­mer­cial­ly vi­able. “Get­ting it done” should mean a fo­cused and in­clu­sive ad­just­ment process that is trans­par­ent, in the line with the 2015 cam­paign man­i­festo “let’s do this to­geth­er”. It does not.

Gov­ern­ments are re­spon­si­ble for “pub­lic goods” like ed­u­ca­tion, heath care, se­cu­ri­ty, rule of law, and oth­er mun­dane de­liv­er­ables like pass­ports and pen­sions, the very in­sti­tu­tions that are the epit­o­me of in­ef­fi­cien­cy.

A col­league’s ex­pe­ri­ence is in­struc­tive. Her pass­port ex­pired in Oc­to­ber 2019. Call­ing the pass­port of­fice, she was giv­en an ap­point­ment for March 20th, 2020 and told that the pass­port would be ready in May 2020. Al­ter­na­tive­ly, she could get a Jan­u­ary ap­point­ment in To­ba­go. In 2017, she went with her moth­er in­to San Fer­nan­do Gen­er­al and had to wait from 8 am to about 10 pm to be ward­ed. Trans­ferred to Mt. Hope, her moth­er spent 2 days in an A&E cor­ri­dor. Sub­se­quent­ly di­ag­nosed with can­cer, it took 2 weeks to get a re­fer­ral let­ter to St James. In St James, she was told her files were were lost. On her fourth vis­it, she was giv­en one month’s sup­ply of drugs and then no more drugs were avail­able. Need­less to say, her moth­er died.

Build­ing four new hos­pi­tals will not im­prove health care any­more than a new im­mi­gra­tion build­ing im­proved the de­liv­ery of pass­ports. The hos­pi­tals will not fare bet­ter than the Cou­va hos­pi­tal, which is not op­er­a­tional, 4 years af­ter it was opened. Nei­ther will dig­i­tiz­ing thou­sands of doc­u­ments in the Plan­ning Min­istry im­prove ei­ther the plan­ning process, or the speed of con­struc­tion ap­provals.

Po­lit­i­cal ar­gu­ment is be­ing sup­plant­ed by rob­ber talk and men­da­cious fal­lac­i­es on the plat­form tak­ing few po­lit­i­cal risks whilst pre­tend­ing to be the elec­tor’s friend. As a so­ci­ety we need to talk and to en­gage with those whom we dis­agree po­lit­i­cal­ly. There needs to be prob­lem-solv­ing by peo­ple who hold views dif­fer­ent from their own. De­bat­ing, like vot­ing, al­lows peo­ple to dis­agree with­out de­scend­ing in­to name-call­ing or us­ing force.

On­ly civ­il di­a­logue can sus­tain a healthy democ­ra­cy; it is high time that it is placed at the cen­ter of our pol­i­tics. That re­quires lead­er­ship, not bribery in the form of free wa­ter tanks, or plat­form rhetoric as our pri­ma­ry po­lit­i­cal cur­ren­cy.