GOODBYE TO 2004

The year 2004 has had its pluses and minuses and there will be mixed feelings about the Old Year when it yields at midnight to 2005 and with it the start of a New Year. Nonetheless, whether 2004 is regarded by some as a good news or by others as a bad news year, or a mixture of both, thousands of Trinidadians and Tobagonians will head for all inclusive champagne-dinner parties, some of them paying four digit figures, to bid goodbye to the Old Year and welcome 2005 in style. Yet others will attend church services, while many more will either watch the Old Year out at home, or attend parties at the homes of friends or watch fireworks displays.

It has been a year when the number of murders soared to a record high of 259, and together with the number of fatal road accidents and kidnappings made life uncomfortable for concerned Trinidadians and Tobagonians. In addition, 2004 has seen the future of the country’s already scaled down sugar industry placed under the guillotine by World Trade Organisation directives to the European Union to abolish subsidies provided to TT and other ACP sugar producers under the Convention of Lome. And whether we like it or not globalisation is already eating away at the country’s economic fabric.

Government further worsened matters this year by its procrastination on the issue of its promised introduction in 2004 of a meaningful new oil, gas tax regime which was expected to earn needed additional energy revenue for the country. Its deferred introduction has since been “promised” for 2005. The fishing dispute with Barbados over that country’s demand for unrestrained fishing in Trinidad and Tobago’s waters, and Barbados’ claim placed before an international tribunal for a substantial portion of TT’s territorial waters contributed to a further souring of the year. Hurricane Ivan’s battering of Tobago on September 7, causing millions of dollars in damages, was a horrific minus. Reconstruction plans by the Tobago House of Assembly, however, should be realised early in the New Year. Another vexing 2004 minus has been the growth of HIV/AIDS in the country, but Government plans aimed at countering it, including an ongoing education programme, are in place.

Strictly, on the plus side, however, 38 Trinidad and Tobago students, 25 of them girls, made nationals proud when they ranked among the top 420 students of 102 nations who sat this year’s Cambridge University “A” Level examinations. This was worked out on the basis of the top ten in each of 42 subjects. Two Trinidadians and Tobagonians placed first in Chemistry and Physics, while four students, all girls, including three from Bishop Anstey High School, placed in the top ten in the world in English!

Other positives in 2004 were the establishment of the University of Trinidad and Tobago; the proposal to construct a new TT campus of the University of the West Indies; the September reduction of the prime rate for banks; the retaking by TT’s Brian Lara of the title of holder of the highest individual score in Test Cricket and Lara’s leading of the West Indies team to victory in the ICC One-Day International Cricket Series.

Despite the positives, however, in the two preceding paragraphs the record number of murders, many of them reportedly drug and/or gang related; the continued kidnappings and other areas of lawbreaking, as well as the road fatalities and incidence of speeding and dangerous driving, have constituted an uncomfortable blot on the year which Trinidad and Tobago, hopefuly, will not repeat in 2005.