Hap­py 64th In­de­pen­dence Day, Trinidad and To­ba­go!

How of­ten do we re­flect on the progress of our na­tion since the Union Jack was dis­placed by the red, white, and black in 1962? Af­ter 64 years, have we ma­tured enough to live up to our mot­to, “To­geth­er we as­pire, to­geth­er we achieve”? How does our growth tra­jec­to­ry com­pare to oth­er na­tions of sim­i­lar char­ac­ter­is­tics and age? Ja­maica, Bar­ba­dos, and Sin­ga­pore, maybe? Does our econ­o­my boast of a ro­bust, di­verse port­fo­lio? Are we high­er rat­ed on the UN Hu­man De­vel­op­ment In­dex? Is our GDP more im­pres­sive? Are we still weighed down by a colonised psy­che? Have we been unit­ed in the sus­tained pur­suit of na­tion­al progress over the past six decades? If not, what would our ob­sta­cles have been? Is there any pa­tri­ot who does not want to say that our coun­try has out­per­formed all oth­er na­tions in its class?

A few gen­er­a­tions af­ter Dr Williams’ fa­mous “the fu­ture of our na­tion is in the book bags” speech, the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion has an­nounced the pro­cess­ing of al­most 46,000 school sup­plies and book grants, with pay­ments to be­gin just ahead of the com­mence­ment of the new school term on Sep­tem­ber 7. Form Two stu­dents are ex­pect­ed to have six e-text­books in­stalled on their lap­tops, while Form One stu­dents wait for theirs to ar­rive. Last year, PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar up­dat­ed Dr Williams’ quo­ta­tion to “the fu­ture of our na­tion is in the lap­tops.” With the rapid ad­vance­ment in ubiq­ui­tous AI tech­nol­o­gy, will “the fu­ture of our na­tion in the AI prompts of our chil­dren” be the next up­date? Will the best-en­gi­neered prompt ef­fec­tive­ly ac­cess the cloud (da­ta cen­tre) and 3D-print the an­swers to their needs and wants? To be able to con­sid­er these fore­see­able fu­ture pos­si­bil­i­ties sug­gests that our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem has been mak­ing progress.

Has our ed­u­ca­tion sys­tem gen­er­at­ed the lead­er­ship and gov­er­nance a com­pet­i­tive na­tion needs, though? Our democ­ra­cy is sta­ble. This is bet­ter than many na­tions. Even though our ma­jor po­lit­i­cal par­ties op­er­ate as di­a­met­ric op­po­sites, I don’t be­lieve there has been a whole­sale up­end­ing of na­tion­al di­rec­tion at every regime change fol­low­ing gen­er­al elec­tions.

Al­though our peo­ple want in­tegri­ty and ac­count­abil­i­ty, Trinidad and To­ba­go still ranks 81st out of 182 coun­tries on the Cor­rup­tion Per­cep­tions In­dex. Have there been gaps be­tween the gov­ern­ment’s stat­ed poli­cies and ex­e­cu­tion by min­istries and state en­ter­pris­es?

The re­cent head­line, “67 gone from state boards, pub­lic of­fices in 14 months,” is cus­tom­ary when the par­ty con­trol­ling the gov­ern­ment changes af­ter gen­er­al elec­tions. How­ev­er, if there is a high fre­quen­cy of fir­ings/res­ig­na­tions of a gov­ern­ment’s own ap­pointees, that is wor­ri­some. Such was the case with the re­cent re­movals/res­ig­na­tions of two MTS di­rec­tors. There was al­so the ru­mour of the fir­ing/res­ig­na­tion of Her­itage Pe­tro­le­um chair­man, Kurt Ram­lal. He is still on the job, I gath­er. Why would such a false­hood be float­ed? I re­it­er­ate ad nau­se­am, where are the com­pe­tent, re­li­able, ex­pe­ri­enced UNC peo­ple, though? If they aren’t found, these turnovers are un­like­ly to sub­side. How will gov­ern­ment de­liv­ery be im­pact­ed?

As we turn 64, in the year be­fore the ex­pect­ed flow of nat­ur­al gas from do­mes­tic and cross-bor­der fields with re­serves mea­sured in “tcf”, we hope it doesn’t flow like Man­ley’s “dose of salts”. How many of the mol­e­cules pass­ing through our in­fra­struc­ture will ac­tu­al­ly ben­e­fit our peo­ple? How tem­po­rary will such pro­vi­sions be? Will there be a gas boom, then a bust? Haven’t we seen that movie be­fore?

I read Dr Ein­stein Mil­lán Ar­cia’s bub­ble-burst­ing take on Venezuela’s sign­ing of nat­ur­al gas agree­ments with BP and Shell. Are we go­ing to get short­ed? Do we be­lieve that our best in­ter­ests were served by the en­er­gy ma­jors or by our neigh­bour at the sign­ing? How much of the gas will feed our hun­gry in­dus­tries, and at a cost that will dri­ve our na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment? Are there any guar­an­tees?

Sure­ly our in­fra­struc­ture and many oth­er con­ve­niences are wor­thy of hand­some com­pen­sa­tion. The news of Shell’s re­lease of the rig con­tract for the Aphrodite project has raised fur­ther con­cerns. NGC Chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen has sought to al­lay those fears. With the ever-grow­ing ex­pec­ta­tions of pub­lic sec­tor work­ers re­gard­ing their salaries and back pay, the gov­ern­ment will need to en­sure the de­liv­ery of all these projects.

As an en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist at heart, I would love it if we could pow­er our na­tion with re­new­able en­er­gy, but as a prag­ma­tist, we need to feed our peo­ple and find ways of wean­ing off hy­dro­car­bons. I don’t know if that will ever hap­pen, giv­en how lit­tle agri­cul­ture, tourism, man­u­fac­tur­ing, and oth­er ser­vices con­tribute to our GDP.

Last week’s glac­i­er col­lapse at the Nepal-Ti­bet bor­der is a re­minder of the im­pact of hu­man-dri­ven glob­al heat­ing. Even the per­mafrost is thaw­ing. The mas­sive, dev­as­tat­ing flood re­mind­ed me of the floods we ex­pe­ri­ence right here. For our own flood-prone cap­i­tal, a study shelved at the Min­istry of Works’ Drainage Di­vi­sion since 2009 has rec­om­mend­ed in­fra­struc­ture work to raise the city of Port-of-Spain. Phased im­ple­men­ta­tion was planned with in­ter­na­tion­al grant fund­ing due to the high cost in­volved. The gov­ern­ment’s re­vi­tal­i­sa­tion thrust could shed new light on these and oth­er stud­ies and in­vite in­vest­ment, help­ing ad­vance our na­tion’s de­vel­op­ment.

Af­ter 64 years of In­de­pen­dence, it is time we ad­vance our na­tion­al agen­da to­geth­er rather than dis­tract our­selves with self­ish­ness and in­se­cu­ri­ty.