Who is popular today?

Our new government is now two weeks old and has begun getting its fingers dirty and feet wet, while we anxiously await the fulfilment of promises and the chance to gauge if the electorate made the right choice. We are still in the phase of revealing failings of the previous administration and affirmations about what will be achieved but there is a sense that the public has little appetite for disappointment.
To what extent the inherited “financial hole of TT$4.42 billion” can be plugged, if at all, is one of the big question marks, as is the inevitability and wisdom of running a deficit of $11 billion this year, as the PM estimates. The cuts outlined so far will not dent that expenditure figure, especially if the property taxes are unnecessarily repaid. Reducing state-funded housing for ministers and other officials would be most welcome, not least because the practice is yet another colonial habit adopted without proper reckoning, but, like Elon Musk’s unpopular and damaging DOGE project, those savings really do not pay the bills. So, those measures feel like tinkering.
What is needed is a root-and-branch redesign of the economy. The energy sector will inevitably remain the basis of our economy, notwithstanding the paradox that as a fossil fuel producer, we contribute to the destruction of the environment while, as a small island state, we are simultaneously severely exposed to the effects of that destruction. How we balance that is critical.
Encouragingly, good appointments have been made to give new thrust to trade and manufacturing but the project to increase our non-energy assets must prioritise improving tax collection – taxpayers have a bigger stake in society – and more private-public sector collaborations. Growing our human capital is fundamental and must include our valuable cultural assets. The tertiary education thrust should include educating the populace about the environment and its conservation, and about civil society.
Poor planning and structuring of the economy have caused many distortions in society. Our education system has produced world-class experts and professionals but the narrow economy cannot absorb them. How is it that our nursing students are the worst performing at the CXC regional exams? It cannot be that the average national IQ has plummeted. Compared to many countries, and certainly for our size, our healthcare system is enviable, even with all its flaws, but that too mocks our inability to deliver. We have had the means but we have insisted on methods that fail us. Let’s hope this new government will change that trajectory.
None of that is contentious. TT citizens largely agree on the priorities of the country, but certain policies divide us. Personally, one aspect of the crime policy is most worrying: The PM’s gun ownership policy.
TT may feel like a frontier society but it is not. We do not need to “stand our ground” and shoot Apaches who come to torch our caravans and scalp us while out on the prairie. That is somebody else’s history, not ours. The US has the highest incidence of firearm homicides in the world. It is not a good model and not the answer to keeping us safe. In other countries, where only security personnel and few citizens own guns, people enjoy greater safety, not less.
Ours is already a violent society and the US arms industry does not need our forex. Putting more guns into the hands of citizens and having more lethal weapons stockpiled will increase the number of murders and hasten a cultural change in our society that will be irreversible.
In the 1950s, when our economy was not based on oil and gas and TT was meant to be the breadbasket of the too-soon defunct West Indies Federation, my father was an agronomist in the employ of the TT government. He managed large, state-owned agricultural farms around the country and he was also a keen hunter. He had a licensed rifle. One day, his rifle was removed from our state-owned house and used to commit a double murder. Fortunately, he was not implicated because the murderer used the weapon on himself. Without access to the rifle, a double murder would almost certainly not have occurred.
It is easier to survive a cutlass attack than a hail of bullets from a modern weapon. And there is no doubt that if a gun is present, someone will get badly hurt or killed, and it will most likely be the gun owner. I know someone who had three legal guns. His home was burgled and two guns were stolen. One was retrieved. That’s one more once-legal weapon in illegal possession. Question: Why does one man own three guns? Answer: Because he can.
Encouraging gun ownership creates a false sense of security while raising the stakes. Far better to fix the sources of the growing crime problem by digging deeper for real solutions.
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