One year after general elections were held in Trinidad & Tobago and the Peoples National Movement (PNM), led by Dr Keith Rowley, was elected to government, the pollsters have been busy assessing the views of public opinion on the government’s performance.
The pollsters have indicated a 51% approval rating, and a 41% disapproval rating in respect of the government’s performance, a situation in which, Dr Rowley has asserted, the government can take some comfort. No doubt his sentiment would be more or less the same in respect of the public’s perception of the performance of government vis-à-vis the rating for the opposition, indicated as 55% for the PNM and 37% for the opposition, as he has summarized the poll results as “a fairly good reflection of what we have started to do”.
General discussion in Trinidad & Tobago on the poll results would appear to suggest a certain satisfaction with the PNM, this apparently being a reflection of the relatively of low expectations of any substantial improvement in the economic situation which the government inherited in 2015. Economic growth, which stood at 2.1% in 2015 has contracted to 1.8% leading the experts to indicate that they expected the current “bleak economic outlook” to persist.
As has been continuously indicated by the government, what is now described as a recession is a consequence of declining energy prices that has then induced a similar contraction from the non-oil sector, including in particular, the private construction sector. And in fact, reports indicate that a similar situation is reflected in cutbacks in activity in respect of public infrastructure normally based on fiscal revenues from natural gas and crude oil production which have usually been expected to take up the slack and “prime the pump” to ensure the maintenance of private economic demand.
But if there is a certain pessimism about economic prospects going into 2017, what is certainly increasingly visible is a certain degree of public concern about a lack of any slowdown, and indeed a continuing increase, in the crime situation in the country.
The Prime Minister had included in the government as Minister of National Security, a former top official of the Defence Force, but up to now there has seemed to be little indication of a diminution of criminal activities, including, in particular, the murder rate in the country. And in a sense newspaper reports seem to be almost more concerned with this phenomenon, given that the economic situation of a mineral-based economy is accepted as being a function of the international economic environment.
From a regional perspective, there would appear to be a more active stance on the part of the government vis-à-vis its interest in the prospects of regional integration. This reflects the traditional stance of the PNM as propelled by former Prime Minister Patrick Manning. In general, there had seemed to be a more muted perspective on the part of the government led by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, but Prime Minister Rowley appeared to want to re-emphasise Trinidad’s interest in regionalism soon after his party’s re-election, in particular, by his visit to Jamaica soon after the assumption of office there by the new Jamaica Labour Party government.
On that visit Rowley stressed the importance of the two countries maintaining a responsibility to accept their “leadership role” in Caricom, as well as taking cognizance of the necessity to “increase the focus on security” in the context of events occurring in the wider international environment. Rowley, of course, will surely have been conscious of events occurring next to Trinidad, specifically in the context of what appears to be increasing domestic instability in Venezuela.
This specific reference obviously reflects the situation of Trinidad as a haven for persons from Venezuela seeking, in normal and now abnormal, times, to come to and remain in Trinidad. Trinidadians will be well aware of what appears to be an increasingly unstable environment in Venezuela as President Maduro is placed under stress from his opponents, leading to widespread public demonstrations in the context of the scarcity of certain domestic goods critical to the welfare of the country’s citizens.
From a Caricom perspective too, the Trinidad government will be aware of the effects of a disruption of the Venezuela administration in terms of the effects of such events on the PetroCaribe Agreement between some Caricom governments and that country. It will not be surprising if a matter like this was raised during Dr Rowley’s visit to Jamaica and within wider Caricom circles.
As the government’s second year of office proceeds, we can expect, from a regional perspective, increasingly intensive consultations among Caricom governments on the implications of events in Venezuela, and their implications for Caricom. But at the same time, we can also expect a certain degree of concentration on the country’s domestic revenue situation, so heavily influenced by an unpredictable international petroleum prices situation.
