Opinion
- Editorial- Commentary
Trinidad Guardian
:
A testing new year for T&T leadership
Prime Minister Patrick Manning's return, renewed and repaired after surgery in Cuba, may be the most hopeful harbinger of the new year soon here. Declining the option of recuperation in Havana, Mr Manning showed eagerness to return home at the earliest possible opportunity. He thus expressed interest in at least being close to the scene of unfinished business, if not yet at the centre of the action.
The prospect now unfolding of 2009 offers a rare combination of tough circumstances to be confronted at various levels. At the purely political level, long-scheduled local government elections are to be held. Or persuasive reasons must be advanced for their postponement yet again. Well before the July 2009 date for local government elections, the Tobago House of Assembly elections will have conveyed decisive soundings about the support enjoyed by the ruling party.
Inside the PNM, where Mr Manning as political leader in late 2007 risked alienating substantial elements of the old guard, he has since gambled further by turning Keith Rowley from ally into enemy.
Dr Rowley, a former senior minister, has so far avoided undertaking a direct challenge to the Manning leadership. His response to his dismissal from the Cabinet, however, will have led to the tough-minded review of key policy actions likely to be occasioned in the UFF inquiry into government construction and the cherished, state-owned Udecott.
The portfolio reshuffle following a Cabinet retreat must remain on Mr Manning's to-do list. Certainly he must seek more precisely to match horses for courses among members of the untried team he assembled in late 2007. On the parliamentary front, many items will have been carried over from 2008. As Guardian public affairs columnist Gail Alexander noted yesterday, three bills remained un-enacted, and 27 questions unanswered when the session ended on December 12.
Decent respect for public opinion requires adoption of firm new determination to answer Parliamentary questions and meet adequate criteria of transparent government. The package of legislation to be brought over includes measures designed to support crime-fighting by legalising wire tapping or other interceptions of private communications. It's in the area of economic management that the government leadership will be facing its sternest test. Recessions of varying severity in all the major industrial economies are certain to affect T&T's economic performance.
Already, the budgeted projections of revenue have been reduced; spending cutbacks have been announced, and the attendant reductions in employment projected. No business as usual over the last seven years may be contemplated for 2009 and beyond. So drastic have been the world economic and financial disruptions, with effects on T&T still fully to be felt, that extraordinary measures will need to be entertained. No surprise, then, that a 2009-2010 budget may come earlier than expected. This would enable a reordering of planning priorities in line with latest information and indications about world market conditions, and expectations of vital foreign exchange earnings from the energy sector enterprises.
It's going to be the year in which T&T tests itself before the witness of the world with the holding of two major conferences: the April 17-19 Fifth Summit of the Americas; and the November 27-29 Commonwealth heads of government meeting. The financial costs of being the host nation for these events are likely to be the least demanding. With these two conferences, T&T will have thrust itself into international eyes and will have proven up possession of requisite management skills to deliver them.
In that sense, T&T will never be the same again. The new year must thus be a signal highlight of the Patrick Manning career. The prayers for his successful surgery and recuperation should continue to the end of seeking his return to the helm of the vigorous leadership needed for the coming months and years.
The Trinidad Guard is
one of Trinidad's Newspapers.
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This
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December 27th, 2008. Petroleumworld
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News 12/31/08
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