TOMORROW’S T&T BUDGET
ACCUSTOMED to presentations of mega budgets and big spending on social services and economic development programmes, the people of Trinidad and Tobago are bracing themselves for a “budget of difference” tomorrow by Finance Minister, Karen Nunez-Tesheira.

For a start, as the twin-island state was marking its 47th independence anniversary last week amid conflicting arguments whether the economy is heading into recession, there were open hints of  cutbacks on government spending in the face of an expected zero economic growth this year.

Central Bank Governor, Ewart Williams disagrees that the country was in a virtual state of economic recession, but has stressed that the government had to “watch its spending” habit, as the “tough time is here…”

In contrast to an informed analysis by economist and UWI (St Augustine campus) lecturer, Gregory McGuire that “the good times are over,” Prime Minister, Patrick Manning has, on the other hand, called on Trinis to “loosen your belts” as there was no need any longer to heed his 2008 call to “tighten” their belts.

This past Friday, the Trinidad Guardian, in editorially noting that the country was travelling down an “uneasy road to deficit financing,” said: “It is a bit worrying that after a full 15 years of increasingly large sums of revenues expended in the budget, and on dozens of mega projects, the economy has reached the point of needing to depend on perhaps significant borrowing to fund the economic programme for next year…”

But Mr Manning continues to project optimism, one that is similarly shared by even a couple of cabinet colleagues, the Central Bank Governor, and independent economists who point to negative growth and the need for more realistic fiscal management.

Truth is that Prime Minister Manning increasingly speaks, often in sharp contrast to close advisers and ministerial colleagues, with confidence about “the future ahead,” and even as an official audit was last week revealing dangerous levels of decline in the country’s vital foreign exchange earner – liquefied natural gas (LNG).

While Manning, business leaders and financial experts were focused on the economic challenges on the country’s 47th Independence and tomorrow’s budget presentation, Leader of the opposition United National Congress-Alliance (UNC-A), Basdeo Panday, was expressing a political concern of his own. He sees the country “descending into tyranny.”

PANDAY/MANNING POLITICS
Whatever the reasons for his evident disappointment and bitterness with the politics and culture of Trinidad and Tobago, it is simply difficult to agree with Mr Panday.

Neither the undefined “discrimination (racial/political?)” alluded to in a published media comment last Monday, nor the known lack of pure water supply, from which a number of communities continue to suffer daily, can seriously be considered as having anything to do with the accepted concept of tyranny in Trinidad and Tobago.

What could well be questioned, with some justification, is the surprisingly haughty leadership style that Prime Minister Manning has been increasingly displaying, the more so following the second-term electoral victory of his governing People’s National Movement (PNM).

It is the image of a leader seemingly anxious to exploit an overwhelming parliamentary majority; the accumulated wealth of an economy revolving largely around oil and natural gas exports; a parliamentary opposition bent on self-destruction; as well as a very submissive party and cabinet that combine to now have him behaving like “the father of the nation” he once declared himself to be in a national broadcast.

Let it be clearly understood that the powers he today wields as PNM leader and a Prime Minister who harbours a passion also to become an Executive President was earned by fair, democratic means.

This truth must not, however, be confused or interpreted by political sycophants seeking to win Manning’s favour, and pandering to his fancy as “father” of the nation. The real and only national political “father” remains the historian, politician, and democrat, Dr Eric Eustace Williams.

And what of Mr Panday and his much divided United National Congress-Alliance at this time of readiness for the expected national budget of difference, with cautions on public spending amid more economic uncertainties?

Now in the winter of his years, this once staunch, admirable crusader for change, as trade unionist and politician, full of charisma and flamboyance, Panday should perhaps humbly reflect on his own political “descent” instead of engaging in unproductive talk of Trinidad and Tobago’s “descent into tyranny” under the rule of Manning’s PNM.

For all the acclaimed social and economic progress, Trinidad and Tobago can neither ignore nor mask its frightening levels of rampant criminality.

The rates of murder, kidnapping for ransom, armed robberies and rapes are simply mindboggling, and now getting worse as the years go by. But, “descent into tyranny?”

What makes it all the more depressing for the broad mass of Trinidadians and Tobagonians –always with their refreshing sense of humour and cordiality — is that both Manning and Panday are yet to come forward with any original, imaginative initiative to arrest the divisions that mock their separate calls for unity.

Neither Mr Manning nor Mr Panday has to remind me about the sad situation in my own Guyanese homeland. I am fully aware of the social and political realities there as well, and wish for the same creative “leadership initiatives” in both these multiracial member states of our Caribbean Community.