THE EDITOR: The news about the Dragon serves to remind us that we do exist in a world where the ups and downs of geopolitics will continue to affect our fortunes. But as I, unfortunately, saw others revelling in this setback for the country and UNC politicians taking platforms to say, “I told you so,” this was for me a sobering reminder of what this election is about – who is best placed to manage our affairs during good and especially during uncertain times.
Running a country is never smooth sailing, as we have seen over the last ten years with the collapse of energy prices, covid19, and the rise in global inflation. However, we have had the opportunity to judge the two main parties on how they manage in a crisis.
The PNM has demonstrated that it can hold the ground, maintain a level head and responsibly navigate us through major challenges. Just look at its record on these same economic and health challenges. We have come out of them and good policies have put us on a sustainable growth path.
I have also had the opportunity to see how the UNC deals with these problems at the helm of the country and I am not impressed. The oil price remained elevated above US$90 per barrel for most of its tenure. But in the middle of 2014 it started to fall, eventually reaching less than US$50 per barrel within a year.
What was the UNC's reaction? It initially denied this would be an issue. As early as November 2014, both the minister of finance and the minister of energy were on record stating our revenues would not be significantly impacted. By the end of the month, they admitted there would be an impact, and two months later they accepted the budget had to be revisited.
What was worse, during this energy price collapse of 2015, the UNC continued to spend irresponsibly and made all sorts of election promises it knew couldn’t be kept. It was so bad that within days of assuming office, the new minister of finance was informed that TT only had three days of cash left to run the country. Our economy started its decline in 2015, the last year of the UNC’s tenure in office.
The same UNC in 2025 is making promises again which it knows cannot be kept or will bring economic disaster. By conservative estimates, the UNC plan could balloon the borrowing per year to over $20 billion, and I have heard of a plan for the devaluation of the TT dollar to pay for this. As someone with some knowledge in the field, I can say this is highly irresponsible, especially as people in the party gloat over the Dragon challenges.
In this election season I must step back from the noise and ask myself a serious and sober question. Global uncertainty and risk are on the rise, international markets are falling, there’s a trade war and actual wars being fought. In these uncertain times, who is best placed to manage my affairs and navigate these challenges to place us on a steady path?
It certainly cannot be the party that failed to identify these global risks in 2015 and continued to act irresponsibly. It certainly cannot be the party that conti
