Where is TT’s populist movement?

Josh Surtees

Outside my door this week I saw a baby lizard, dead on the ground with no front legs. How on earth would it ever have got anywhere in that state? I wondered.

In some ways, that legless, lifeless lizard felt like a metaphor for this country.

When I first arrived here five years ago I was bedazzled by what this place had to offer. The food, the music, the people, the Carnival, the art, the culture, the caustic sense of humour. I was impressed too by the education, technology, subsidised energy, housing and so forth.

When it came to governance, however, I was perplexed. The Parliament was full of people who could talk, debate, thump the table and behave as politicians do – passionate, partisan, quick with “facts” about situations the other side had caused or neglected. But when it came to planning anything novel or sustainable, or cross-party co-operation for the good of the people, there was a void. Bills were whims that the opposition voted against. Money was misspent. The People’s Partnership was falling apart. Warner, Ramlogan, Volney, Ramadharsingh, Roberts and many other ministers tumbled. But instead of a national tragedy it was a comedy.

As the 2015 general election approached, all except the most strident UNC supporters conceded that it was time to let the PNM have another go. The PNM opposition rallies had offered nothing inspiring, merely accusations, but still there was cautious optimism as the fireworks exploded at Rowley’s victory parade. They can’t let the murders continue, they must stabilise the economy, they can’t do any worse, were the assumptions…

When I returned last year, it was apparent that the PNM had kept the economy from disintegrating – commendable, given the empty coffers and oil crisis they were given – by cutting spending. The effects of recession have not been felt in terms of inflation and unemployment, but growth is absent, and no diversification has materialised despite opportunities to expand agriculture and tourism.

A year on from my return, I’m left scratching my head to think of anything solid the Government has achieved, except a National Investment Fund that feels like a donations appeal, and a crime prevention plan that sounds like the Police Academy films.

In March, I watched a televised PNM meeting in Diego Martin called On the Path to Progress – an honest, if deeply underwhelming, strapline.

“Oh lord, I say this is the year for love,” was the intro music. The looped remix version omitted the verses about endemic violence.

Whether it was the fault of TV6 or my cable provider, the audio feed was so atrocious that every word General Secretary Daniel Dookie said was punctuated by heavy distortion, making him sound depraved. I muted my television.

When I turned the sound back up to listen to the member for Diego Martin North East, the audio had gone completely, rendering the Finance Minister mute. Gremlins in the system. Ghosts in the machine. Perhaps another metaphor.

Eventually the tech problems were dealt with and Imbert plotted our route to progress. Or at least pointed out how other countries in the region were not plotting theirs.

He explained how his policy of not devaluing the TT dollar made Trinidad better off than Jamaica, whose US exchange rate was once two-to-one but was now 125 to one. Maintaining the value, he said, had helped inflation remain at between two to three per cent over the last two years.

“Two per cent!” he yelped, jabbing two fingers in the air. “Check Venezuela! The Bolivar is now 2,000 to one, I believe. Or 200,000 to one, I saw a chart the other day…”

It’s actually 120,000 to one, but the finer details are not the point. Is that Trinidad’s benchmark? A crumbling economy with inflation rates at 13,000 per cent and rising?

“We don’t do anything by vaps in this government yuh know. I don’t advise myself yuh know. I get the best possible advice,” he said comfortingly, before rattling off expenditure and deficit figures that sounded decent but were lost on most people in the room. Then, as he laid out the latest on CL Financial, the gremlins mysteriously returned.

The Prime Minister eventually took the stage, to the sound of Blaxx’s Hulk.

I waited for the rather apt opening line: “Never let your problems get you down,” but that too was omitted.

What doesn’t kill you doesn’t make you stronger here in Trinidad, it just makes you harder headed. The third of the country that votes PNM and the third that votes UNC remain entrenched. But why? Because there’s no alternative.

It is puzzling that populist politics hasn’t taken root here yet and spawned that new alternative.

A third of the country doesn’t vote PNM or UNC, and never will. The current malaise provides perfect conditions for a movement and a charismatic figure with a disruptive, revolutionary, shared vision to really take the bull by the horns.