Another one from today's Express.
http://www.trinidadexpress.com/commentaries/PNM-Vision-2030-281141722.htmlPNM Vision 2030
By Indira Rampersad
Story Created: Oct 31, 2014 at 8:00 PM ECT
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Story Updated: Oct 31, 2014 at 8:00 PM ECT )
Last Sunday, the People’s National Movement (PNM) held the first part of it 45th annual convention at the Hyatt Regency hotel in Port of Spain.
It was somewhat surprising that the PNM would choose the luxurious chambers of the plush Hyatt to host its convention, albeit for delegates only. If the PNM’s financial resources are increasing, the implications for the 2015 election are significant.
At the Hyatt convention last Sunday, PNM political leader, Keith Rowley, promised to share the PNM’s policy document “Vision 2030”, in two weeks, another move which caused some consternation because of its top-down approach. Given the PNM’s reaction as well as those of its supporters to alleged lack of consultation of the People’s Partnership on the run-of proposal of the 2014 Constitutional (Amendment) Bill, it would have been prudent for the PNM to disseminate these proposals widely to its critics, membership and supporters alike for critical comments and input. Since criticisms of elitism were attributed to Patrick Manning’s “Vision 2020”, this was a golden opportunity for Rowley to convince potential voters that the PNM is doing things differently this time around.
Since September, 2013, Rowley had announced Vision 2030 as its revised development plan as “part of the People’s National Movement’s new “road map” for the resumption of economic and social development of Trinidad and Tobago”. Then, Vision 2030 was presented with the $10 billion rapid rail. Rowley had stated that “a new PNM administration would take up from where the last PNM government left off ...return to the construction of the billion-dollar rapid rail system, for which the last Manning administration had spent $545 million on a feasibility study”.
The rapid rail project was notably absent in media reports of the PNM’s plans in Vision 2030, announced last Sunday. What surfaced are the issues of crime, the economy, including revenue collection, education, health and governance, particularly, local government.
It was Rowley’s announcement to abolish the Local Government Ministry which created quite a stir last week. Coincidentally, only a few days before, the PNM-held Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation was levied upon for failure to pay a debt amounting to about $2 million.
Indeed, this was not the first time that Rowley has made such a proposal. In early May, 2014, at a meeting in Tobago, he had made the same announcement stating that “the successes with the THA can now be confidently applied in Trinidad thereby removing the role of that minister. The Ministry of Finance will therefore have a greater role to play in the new changes”.
The details of the PNM’s proposal to remove the Local Government Ministry are still uncertain but it has evoked public reaction including comments from former chairman of the Tunapuna/Piarco Regional Corporation and acting United National Congress (UNC) chairman, Khadijah Ameen. She vehemently rejects the proposal insisting that the Local Government Ministry is critical. She affirms that attempts to remove the Local Government Ministry will remove power from the people. Ameen views the Ministry of Local Government as a necessary part of the bureaucracy which can ensure accountability provided that it does not serve as a hindrance. This she affirms can be achieved by good planning.
Rowley’s proposal comes in the face of several calls for greater decentralisation of local government bodies. However, several questions should be considered. Can the THA model be successfully applied to the larger island of Trinidad with its cities, boroughs and regional corporations? The structure of local government is quite different from the THA. Today there are 14 municipalities including two cities—Port-of-Spain and San Fernando; three boroughs—Arima, Chaguanas and Point Fortin; and nine regional corporations—Couva/Tabaquite/Talparo, Diego Martin, Mayaro/Rio Claro, Penal/Debe, Princes Town, San Juan/Laventille, Sangre Grande, Siparia and Tunapuna/Piarco .
To whom will these bodies be answerable if there is no Local Government Ministry? Would the Ministry of Finance be given wider coordinating and supervisory portfolios with regard to these institutions? Would it be able to effectively manage such operations in addition to its existing portfolios? Would this not be a return to the very centralisation which the removal of the Local Government Ministry seeks to address?
The numerous unanswered questions suggest that the proposal needs to be carefully thought out. Stakeholders should be widely consulted on the feasibility of such a measure. Many election plans sound wonderful and look great on glossy manifestos but successive administrations have proved that they may not be practical or implementable.
While political parties are anxious to prove that they are in an advance state of readiness to govern in 2015, they need to be extremely cautious of what they hastily attempt to sell to the population as the election bell tolls. The extremely high expectations and demands of the electorate today are leaving no government unscathed.
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