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Contemporaneously with critical commentaries, the Prime Minister last Sunday attempted certain deflections of the Government’s decision—despite the parlous state of our finances—to accept for its members the hefty salary increases and backpay, which the Salaries Review Commission recommended (the SRC increases).
However, it is reasonable to hold this Government accountable for our financial fragility following its failure to mitigate the effect of a decrease in the availability of natural gas to keep the economy and Government’s revenues buoyant. This Government just kept on spending, including bearing huge liabilities in respect of our unreformed public utilities.
Photo: OPM
The decision to accept the SRC increases deeply impacts the mood of voters because a major topic in the weeks immediately preceding the recommendation was the Government’s aggressive insistence on wage and salary restraint when unions had been offered a 4% increase and the Government was saying “take it or leave it” and “hold strain”.
The inconsistency of this Government maintaining such a position, but then grabbing hefty increases for themselves angered a large cross section of the public.
It is not surprising therefore, particularly as the next general election nears, that the Government is trying to deflect anger at its grab of taxpayers’ money.
Amazingly, it is still trying to ascribe our financial fragility to the United National Congress (the UNC), even after it has had ten years in office to mitigate the splurging of the UNC when the Opposition was last in office.
Photo: Office of the Parliament 2024
The Prime Minister would have us believe that the UNC put the Water and Sewerage Authority (WASA) on the road to debt by an imprudent deal for a desalination plant and the production and sale of desalinated water to WASA with the result that taxpayers’ money is continuously going in debt servicing to cover bills for desalinated water. (See Sunday Express, 1 December 2024.)
But wait a minute. Wasn’t it over the handling of WASA that a former PNM minister of Public Utilities, Robert Le Hunte, resigned from the Cabinet in 2020?
Le Hunte had made “proposals for the restructuring of WASA”. His resignation in May 2020 was “due to a difference in policy positions regarding the Water and Sewerage Authority”. (See Trinidad Express 18 May 2020 and Trinidad Newsday 23 January 2021.)
We need now urgently to learn more about the differences over WASA and whether there was potential to reduce the liabilities for WASA.
(via Newsday)
Before coming to the intended departure from office of the Minister of National Security Fitzgerald Hinds, I digress to reference a piece by a commentator to whom I pay attention.
Sudan-born, London-based journalist and writer, Nesrine Malik, is a columnist for The Guardian (UK) and a regular panellist on the BBC.
Malik recently asserted, in The Guardian (UK) on Monday 25 November 2024, that politics and slogans that were “pursued in ways that are shallow and entirely divorced from voters’ lives” lost Kamala Harris the US election.
She maintains that focus on “the broader systemic impact” of issues had been rejected and in its place there was “a superficial approach that has no edge or universal vision”.
I read Malik’s analysis just as the Government’s attempted deflections of the backlash regarding its acceptance of the SRC increases had begun. It is clear to me that her analysis is not confined to the US political scene.
In our party politics we have much that is shallow and many persistent refusals to consider systemic change—for example: restructuring the public utilities, decreasing the dependency on the energy sector, or relieving the crippling socio-economic disadvantage built in to the education system.
Recent reviews of the sad career of Fitzgerald Hinds in the Ministry of National Security reminds us that he said in 2022, in the midst of a relentlessly mounting murder rate, that his duty was not to ensure that citizens feel safe and secure. That was the epitome of shallow and reactionary.
The UNC is deluding itself if it believes that it can win the trust of the electorate with its current frontline. The departure of Hinds is a significant step in the refreshment of a slate of candidates prior to a general election. The UNC should take note.
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Martin G Daly SC is a prominent attorney-at-law. He is a former Independent Senator and past president of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is chairman of the Pat Bishop Foundation and a steelpan music enthusiast.
I don’t think anyone is surprised at the PNM’s naked greed.