The colour, mer­ri­ment and mu­sic as­so­ci­at­ed with Car­ni­val are over. This Car­ni­val was "gen­er­al­ly safe" and a suc­cess. The Poui trees are bloom­ing. This year, Ra­madan and Lent co­in­cide, a time for peace and calm, a sa­cred time for two ma­jor re­li­gions re­quir­ing prayer, re­flec­tion, and self-sac­ri­fice. This peace and calm will not last.

Next week will al­so see the be­gin­ning of a new po­lit­i­cal pe­ri­od, cul­mi­nat­ing in a gen­er­al elec­tion and a new ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The elec­tion cam­paign will be dom­i­nat­ed by four key is­sues. First, the per­for­mance of the econ­o­my and the pos­si­bil­i­ty that the re­fin­ery could be re­opened will take cen­tre stage, along with claims of eco­nom­ic mis­man­age­ment. Sec­ond, de­clin­ing nat­ur­al gas pro­duc­tion will be a key con­cern for the econ­o­my’s long-term sus­tain­abil­i­ty. The third is­sue is crime, which has con­tin­ued un­abat­ed, notwith­stand­ing the im­po­si­tion of a State of Emer­gency. The fourth is the peren­ni­al al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion and mis­man­age­ment that be­dev­il every ad­min­is­tra­tion.

The UNC and the PNM, the two main po­lit­i­cal par­ties, will seek to con­vince elec­tors that they are cred­i­ble and de­pend­able and that the oth­er par­ty can­not be trust­ed. At vary­ing points, both par­ties have claimed to have "saved" the coun­try or the en­er­gy sec­tor and kept the Trea­sury safe from the "oth­er" side.

At­tor­neys gen­er­al of ei­ther par­ty have ini­ti­at­ed civ­il suits against state en­ter­prise di­rec­tors and of­fi­cials ap­point­ed by the oth­er side.

No one has ever been con­vict­ed, and no mon­ey has been re­cov­ered de­spite con­sid­er­able le­gal ex­pens­es in pur­suit of these al­le­ga­tions. In­deed, most of these cas­es have ei­ther fall­en apart in ig­nominy or have been dis­missed when the oth­er side re­gained of­fice. The on­ly ap­par­ent ben­e­fi­cia­ries are the at­tor­neys for each par­ty.

As soon as the Car­ni­val cel­e­bra­tions were over, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vived the un­fin­ished busi­ness of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s Re­port on the 2023 Fi­nan­cial Year. Once again, she im­plied that $2.6 bil­lion was miss­ing or un­ac­count­ed for and heaped the blame on Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert.

The Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s re­sponse was swift, heavy on rhetoric but light on sub­stance, as it did not ad­e­quate­ly ad­dress the un­der­ly­ing is­sue by by­pass­ing the con­cept of min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al cor­rect­ly point­ed out that ac­count­ing er­rors oc­curred by what­ev­er hap­pen­stance and in­di­cat­ed that the rec­on­cil­i­a­tion could not be sat­is­fac­to­ri­ly ver­i­fied.

It is the min­is­ter’s job to en­sure that the cause of the prob­lem has been cor­rect­ed and to pro­vide all the ev­i­dence re­quired to show that the er­ror has been ad­dressed. It was well with­in the min­is­ter's du­ty and oblig­a­tion to en­sure that the Cen­tral Bank pro­vid­ed all the nec­es­sary ev­i­dence to put this mat­ter to rest. The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al’s sup­ple­men­tal re­port re­peat­ed the same opin­ion and pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence to show that the Cen­tral Bank did not al­low the nec­es­sary ac­cess to its ac­count­ing records. With­out this vi­tal step, the mat­ter was left hang­ing, un­re­solved.

In­stead of bring­ing clo­sure and res­o­lu­tion to this mat­ter by deal­ing with the sys­temic and op­er­a­tional is­sues that re­sult­ed in this de­ba­cle, the min­is­ter em­barked on a pub­lic re­la­tions ex­er­cise and an un­for­tu­nate, em­bar­rass­ing, and ex­pen­sive le­gal ac­tion, which did noth­ing to ad­dress pub­lic con­cerns. While we thank the Fi­nance Min­is­ter for his press re­lease, more needs to be done to re­store pub­lic con­fi­dence in the na­tion­al ac­counts and the agen­cies in­volved in this mat­ter.