THE EDITOR: I had a splendid dream of the general election last week. I dreamt that, as if by some miracle, all our leaders were on the same page, and instead of engaging in the usual bile and viciousness against each other and in the process pulling wool over the people’s eyes with collage after collage of their achievements on the media, or promise after promise for which the funding was questionable, they were now focused on good governance in the interests of the people and the policies and qualities of leadership that would make that happen.
In this they recognised that it was imperative to engage with two fundamentals, the first being the current stature of our revenue stream and, secondly, how the latter can be best managed for the good of the people.
Expectedly, at the forefront was the issue of our oil and gas economy, on which they vowed to enter into arrangements with our big developers more to our advantage, and without the negative impact of the politics as is currently the case with the Donald Trump rampage, but further and more critically, to incentivise our local producers such as Touchstone to develop our land-based resources for local consumption, as well as for the Caricom market.
With the current volatility of the international oil and gas, they saw the good sense in scaling down their thinking and focusing on the resources that we possess, limited as that may appear to be, until conditions became more favourable. Our leaders, however, were quick to acknowledge the error of our over-reliance on oil and gas and the urgent need to diversify the economy, especially for times like this when, with all our eggs in one basket, we seem to be in deep economic trouble.
As regards such diversification, they felt that the focus should be on a link between agricultural production and local manufacturing, and on this some interesting new ideas emerged.
For example, the prospective rice fields in Caroni, Nariva and Oropouche – were they to be developed with Guyana’s rice as a frame of reference and the acreage handed out to Caroni workers – could be used for the purpose intended for the cultivation of crops such as bodi, soya, ginger for the local and Caricom markets, expanding this with leases to other farmers to develop their own existing farms.
And to further extend this diversification, the focus should be on a skills-based component in the education system, tech-voc in the secondary school being a case in point, and bringing UTT and UWI into play to develop cottage industries in fashion, auto, culinary et al, providing the financial incentives to make this happen. And with the people paying their taxes indirectly through such enterprise there would be little need for imposing the exorbitant direct taxes as is current, like property tax, licences, traffic penalties, and that are burdensome to them.
In effect, our leaders envisioned a dynamic society with people engaged in their different forms of expertise and capabilities, from the engineer to the oil worker, from the businessman to the taxi driver, from the homemaker to the fashion designer, from the vendor to the small tradesman, thereby lessening the effect of the now rampant criminality in the country as the number of idle hands will now be significantly reduced.
And they went on and on and on, each on their individual platforms as visionaries for a future nation pointing to other possibilities in the people’s interest.
But suddenly the screeching of the midnight owl, the messenger of death, much like the microphones spewing their election stuff, would jolt me out of my reverie, confronting me with the reality, leaving me all confused.
Impossible dream? Maybe. Maybe not.
DR ERROL N BENJAMIN
via e-mail
Trinidad and Tobago Newsday
