Abdulah: Upper class must also bear ecomonic burdens

Addressing a press conference at the MSJ’s St Joseph village, San Fernando headquarters, yesterday, political leader David Abdulah asked about Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley warnings to the nation to brace itself for economic adjustments and “even some pain” in the 2017 budget, said the issue was how those adjustments would be made and which sector would bear the brunt of the adjustments.

“Who is going to bear the burden of those adjustments? If it was up to the MSJ, those who are earning $100,000 or $150,000 a month, they are the ones who have to be bearing the burden of adjustment because there are people right now who are living as if the price of oil is $90 dollars but 25 percent of the population is below the poverty line. They are living on two dollar oil budget because they can’t make ends meet, they can’t put food on the table for their families, they don’t have a decent shelter over their heads, they work from pay packet to packet, they can’t save or invest in anything so if a quarter of our population is living like that then you can’t implement measures that would make their lives more difficult,” Abdulah said.

“Those who can afford and are living ostentatious lifestyles have to be taxed more, they are the ones who should pay 100 percent GATE, that is how the burden of adjustments has to be made,” he added.

Abdulah also observed that the nation had lost significant revenues due to the previous People’s Partnership government amendments to the tax regime which witnessed multinational companies paying “very little or no taxes” to the state.

“So we lost $20 billion in revenue in the last year or so which is about 1/3 of the revenue of the country and we also lost US $3 billion or more in foreign exchange earnings,” he said.

Abdulah also disagree with the term ‘austerity measures’ which were being bandied about in some sectors saying these measures were indicative of the IMF liberal economic policies which included “privatisation, large scale retrenchment bin the public service, the cutting back of pension benefits, and social services, increasing the cost of electricity and water, removing subsidies from public transport, all of which throws the burden of adjustment on working people and the poor and the vulnerable.” “So we disagree with the notion of austerity measures,” he said.

And regarding the PNM’s first year in office, he said they had been unable to “navigate the country’s way out of the perfect storm of an economic crisis and collapsed institutions of state.” “It is the view of the MSJ that such a process of navigation is a medium to long term one, and therefore it would not have been possible for the Government to get the country out of the crisis in one year.

However, what the citizens quite rightly expected to see since September 7, 2015 were major signs that the ship was turning direction and heading towards major change. That has not happened, hence a certain mood of disillusionment,’ he said.

He observed that a “simple Cabinet re-shuffle’ would not solve the nation’s myriad problems and that only systemic change would be able to transform the nation’s economic and social landscape.

“The MSJ can’t see either of the two traditional parties challenging the status quo, they being creatures of the existing system.

We must therefore “Re-Imagine our Future”, he said before announcing that the MSJ would be contesting the Arima Borough Corporation and the Point Fortin Borough Corporation in the forthcoming Local Government election.

Asked about Trinidad and Tobago traditionally being a two party state and whether the MSJ could make an impact, Abdulah said, “there is nothing in any of the holy scriptures where it says that there must only be two political parties in this country ore any country, it is not God ordained so we must get out of the idea there must be two political parties. It is a manmade arrangement to serve the interest of the elite and the status quo, to divide the population by race and religion.”