Mick­ela Pan­day

What kind of Trinidad and To­ba­go are we try­ing to build?

It is a sim­ple ques­tion, but one that every gov­ern­ment must an­swer, not on­ly with press re­leas­es, but with its de­ci­sions. Gov­ern­ments re­veal their pri­or­i­ties by where they spend their time, their po­lit­i­cal cap­i­tal and their en­er­gy. Those choic­es tell the coun­try what its lead­ers val­ue most.

That is why pri­or­i­ties mat­ter.

Like many cit­i­zens, I ac­cept­ed that the new Gov­ern­ment in­her­it­ed se­ri­ous chal­lenges. Crime was out of con­trol. The econ­o­my had lost mo­men­tum. Pub­lic con­fi­dence in our in­sti­tu­tions had weak­ened. The pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion de­served crit­i­cism for many of those fail­ures.

But gov­ern­ments are not elect­ed sim­ply to ex­plain the prob­lems they in­her­it­ed. They are elect­ed to show us where the coun­try is go­ing. That is the stan­dard by which every gov­ern­ment should be judged.

The ques­tion, there­fore, is not what went wrong over the last decade, but what comes next. What is the vi­sion that gives busi­ness­es the con­fi­dence to in­vest, young peo­ple the con­fi­dence to stay and fam­i­lies the con­fi­dence that to­mor­row will be bet­ter than to­day?

In­stead, too of­ten, our pol­i­tics feels trapped in yes­ter­day. Too much en­er­gy is spent re­vis­it­ing old bat­tles, set­tling po­lit­i­cal scores and cre­at­ing the ap­pear­ance of ac­tiv­i­ty, while the coun­try waits for a clear­er sense of pur­pose. A na­tion can­not build its fu­ture if its lead­ers are con­sumed by its past.

The econ­o­my il­lus­trates the point.

Nu­trien closed its am­mo­nia op­er­a­tions. Then, Methanex an­nounced the in­def­i­nite idling of its Ti­tan plant af­ter be­ing un­able to se­cure a new nat­ur­al gas con­tract. These are not sim­ply sto­ries about multi­na­tion­al com­pa­nies. They are a re­minder that in­vestor con­fi­dence must be earned.

Every ma­jor in­vest­ment that hes­i­tates, every young Trinida­di­an who be­gins to won­der whether op­por­tu­ni­ty lies else­where should con­cern us all. Not be­cause it makes head­lines, but be­cause it rais­es a far big­ger ques­tion: where is our long-term strat­e­gy for growth?

No coun­try can drift in­to pros­per­i­ty. Di­rec­tion mat­ters.

The same prin­ci­ple al­so ap­plies be­yond the econ­o­my.

The Gov­ern­ment sus­pend­ed the Mil­i­tary-Led Aca­d­e­m­ic Train­ing (Mi­LAT) pro­gramme. Whether one sup­port­ed Mi­LAT or not is be­side the point. Lead­er­ship is not mea­sured on­ly by what it ends, but by what it builds.

If one pro­gramme is dis­con­tin­ued, what re­places it? What is the broad­er strat­e­gy for young peo­ple who need dis­ci­pline, op­por­tu­ni­ty and hope? End­ing a pro­gramme is an ad­min­is­tra­tive de­ci­sion. Re­plac­ing it with some­thing bet­ter is an act of lead­er­ship.

Crime presents an even greater chal­lenge.

Ex­tra­or­di­nary mea­sures may some­times be nec­es­sary, but no coun­try has ever built last­ing pub­lic safe­ty through emer­gency mea­sures alone. Re­al progress re­quires con­sis­tent in­vest­ment in polic­ing, in­tel­li­gence, bor­der se­cu­ri­ty, jus­tice, pre­ven­tion and op­por­tu­ni­ties that keep young peo­ple away from crim­i­nal net­works in the first place.

That is the dif­fer­ence be­tween man­ag­ing to­day’s cri­sis and prepar­ing for to­mor­row’s.

It is al­so why I wor­ry when pol­i­tics be­gins to look more like per­for­mance than pur­pose. There al­ways seems to be an­oth­er care­ful­ly pro­duced video. An­oth­er mo­ment de­signed for so­cial me­dia.

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion mat­ters, and every mod­ern gov­ern­ment must com­mu­ni­cate ef­fec­tive­ly. But com­mu­ni­ca­tion is not a sub­sti­tute for gov­ern­ing. Vis­i­bil­i­ty is not the same as vi­sion. Trinidad and To­ba­go does not need a Tik­Tok Gov­ern­ment. It needs lead­er­ship that un­der­stands the dif­fer­ence be­tween be­ing seen and mak­ing a dif­fer­ence.

Lead­er­ship is al­so mea­sured by the strength of our in­sti­tu­tions. Strong in­sti­tu­tions de­pend on pub­lic trust, and pub­lic trust de­pends on the be­lief that com­pe­tence, in­tegri­ty and mer­it re­main the guid­ing prin­ci­ples of pub­lic life. When­ev­er ap­point­ments cre­ate the per­cep­tion that loy­al­ty to in­di­vid­u­als is val­ued above abil­i­ty, con­fi­dence in those in­sti­tu­tions in­evitably suf­fers.

My con­cern is not the pol­i­tics of the mo­ment. My con­cern is the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Pol­i­tics is tem­po­rary. The coun­try is per­ma­nent.

I refuse to be­lieve that Trinidad and To­ba­go’s best days are be­hind us. But if they are to be ahead of us, we need a gov­ern­ment that is as fo­cused on the next gen­er­a­tion as it is on the next news cy­cle.

Long af­ter to­day’s po­lit­i­cal ar­gu­ments have fad­ed, we will all live with the con­se­quences of the de­ci­sions be­ing made now. Our chil­dren will in­her­it the econ­o­my we build, the in­sti­tu­tions we strength­en or weak­en and the op­por­tu­ni­ties we cre­ate, or fail to cre­ate.

That is why pri­or­i­ties mat­ter.

The coun­try is not ask­ing for per­fec­tion. It is ask­ing for pur­pose. It is ask­ing for lead­er­ship that spends less time look­ing back­wards and more time build­ing what comes next.

Less time di­vid­ing us and more time build­ing the con­fi­dence that this coun­try can re­alise its enor­mous po­ten­tial. Trinidad and To­ba­go has nev­er lacked tal­ent. We have nev­er lacked re­silience. We have nev­er lacked peo­ple will­ing to work, in­no­vate and serve.

What we can­not af­ford to lack is di­rec­tion. His­to­ry has a habit of ask­ing every gov­ern­ment the same ques­tion: Did you leave the coun­try stronger than you found it? If we keep that ques­tion at the cen­tre of our pol­i­tics, then per­haps we will fi­nal­ly be­gin to put Trinidad and To­ba­go at the cen­tre of our pri­or­i­ties.

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