Economist: Critical aspects missed by PM

Economist Dr Vanus James says the Prime Minister’s pre-recorded speech to the nation had shown Dr Rowley on an election footing.

Speaking with Newsday yesterday by phone, James said the address, which was aired in two parts on Sunday and Monday nights, focused merely on to the billions of dollars borrowed by the previous government on the eve of elections with short periods of repayment.

“He ratcheted up the election campaign, because I don’t think they ever stopped electioneering from the time they won the last election.

“Every presentation the Prime Minister has made since taking office has had the same structure: blame the past Government for the problems we have, and say, 'Look forward to a bright future under the PNM.' The summary point he is making is, even if you have some lingering hardships from this adjustment, citizens can look forward to a bright future under the PNM leadership,” he said.

Having listened to the entire presentation, James believes if the intention is to give citizens information to help mind their own business – the title of the presentation – then two critical components are missing.

“We have no overarching framework in which to read his data, so a wide scope of the development strategy, are we going to do more to industrialise our services and export some of the proceeds.

"What about the production of the healthcare that was mentioned in the midterm review, other professional services, tertiary education, the creative industries, the financial services, ICT? These are all mentioned in the vision 2030 but they don’t fit into this narrative and you need them to in order to give the citizens a full picture of where the PNM is really trying to recommend we go.

“We don’t know how the Tobago economy would fit into his narrative apart from the export of primary tourism services. Tobago’s future cannot be locked into primary tourism services and nothing he has said points us to how we can fit ourselves into the industrialisation of the services sector.” the economist said.

The second missing component, according to James, is constitutional reform.

“A big agenda undertaken by the People’s Partnership government was constitution reform. If you are going to guarantee a good future for the citizens and if we were to mind our own business, we would need an agenda of constitution reform to shape the way we participate in influencing executive activities. He has said nothing on that…we know that the People’s Partnership constitutional efforts failed.

“Now if you are going to tell us where we’ve come from, where we are now and where we’re going on the economy, and if institutions matter for the development of the economy, then you need to tell us where we were with constitution reform, where we are now and where we’re supposed to be going under your leadership.”

James pointed to the Constitution (Amendment) (Tobago Self-Government) Bill 2018, which is intended to reform the relationship between Trinidad and Tobago.

“It may be the most significant piece of legislative effort that they’ve put together since coming into office. None of that is mentioned, and that is vital if the citizens are going to be able to mind our business, its not enough to give us data.

“The current Constitution leaves us having to judge whether this government is wicked or that government is wicked, if you’re claiming that the past government was essentially wicked in its behaviour, how do we as citizens prevent that kind of behaviour on any government’s part, whether its your government or the next government to come.

"That is not enough. If we are going to 'mind our business,' you need mechanisms to use to restrain the executives and make them do what you want and that’s completely missing from the agenda.”