Vision 2020 is a con

The Editor: When the Vision 2020 thing commenced I wrote an open letter in the press to one of the Committee members making certain observations and predictions which have come to pass even sooner than I anticipated. In general what I stated was that the entire pursuit was an opiate, faulty in fundamental respects and smacked of deception, insincerity and bogusness. The fact that nowhere in the last budget was it even mentioned is testimony to this as is the observation that despite all the fanfare and all the money and manpower expended on the exercise (I publicly wrote on serious shortcomings in the only area of the Vision Committee Report I studied which was that on energy) it is hardly ever spoken about and we have moved on.

As faulty as the document undoubtedly was it must have pointed to a necessary and significant degree of ongoing organised effort and dedication to just plan the road to 2020. This would have had to begin with dialogue and planning between and among the country’s leadership to develop, agree and chart a course towards 2020. There may even have been some suggested consultations with the masses (but given the way things work here, these would have been perfunctory and therefore quite irrelevant). In short the leadership would have had to transform itself and start thinking and working harder than leaders in the most progressive of developed countries in order to even get us, in the year 2020, to where these countries are now. The very minimum requirement then would have been an awareness of and acknowledgement of the need to deal with issues like the Beetham Dump and others, the innumerable malfunctioning Waste Water Treatment Plants, the lack of proper physical planning and development, crime, our increasingly polluted seas and water courses, the transportation crisis, the endemic corruption, crime, the education crisis, the brain drain, the poor health service, the legal and judicial system, the crisis in all our institutions, etc, etc. 

Most of our ministers seem to not even acknowledge these as issues and shockingly neither do most of us who call this place home. The public service system is collapsing or has collapsed and Minister Saith is telling us that reform is quietly taking place even while the PM and others complain of the inability of this system to efficiently manage the PSIP and commences the implementation of  a plan to establish a parallel public service called state enterprises. The primary deterrent to progress in TT is not only the backwardness of our representatives and their inability to transform themselves, it is also their determination to keep the country at a similar level of development and then try to convince us, by way of propaganda.

Change to them would be an anathema and hostile to their kind of political culture so why should they really want Vision 2020? The political perspective on this is to ask two related questions, would it make for good politics and good policy? (an MP/Minister friend of mine taught me that — frightening isn’t it? It really has an immorality of its own). Let us face it Vision 2020 has been a massive diversionary ploy and a con and says more about our propensity for old talk than anything else. We will not get to 2020 on a wish, ask the beggars, and if our leadership cannot make the transformation within themselves so as to simply recognise and acknowledge the issues, how can such a vision even come into existence and be shared? How will we get to begin the journey? Even if the vision had merit how would the leadership know where and how to start that outward journey if they cannot begin to conceive of the desperate need for it?

Eugene A Reynald,
Port-of-Spain