Budget is a big pappyshow

Economist Hayden Blades expressed this opinion yesterday as one of seven panelists at a post-budget breakfast forum hosted by the Oilfield Workers Trade Union (OWTU) and the Co-operative Credit Union League of Trinidad and Tobago at the former’s Paramount building in San Fernando.

“We have reached a stage where constitutional reform is no longer optional,” said Blades. “We have reached a stage where we have to fundamentally adjust the way we govern ourselves.

We have to fundamentally adjust the way we allocate our resources.

We have to fundamentally adjust the transparency and accountability of how we handle our resources. Unless and until we address the issue of who the politicians really listen to, how they spend our money is totally out of our control.” One of the fundamental changes Blades called for was for a fixed date for the National Budget announcement.

This, he said, would allow citizens to adequately prepare for the Budget and demand desired policies beforehand. He also called for a performance-based budgetary process whereby the effectiveness of the policies implemented in the last year’s budget are assessed to determine which policies should continue to be pursued and which should be scrapped.

Finally, he said ordinary citizens are left out of the democratic process after politicians are elected, and the problem is exacerbated by the fact that citizens do not have the ability to recall politicians or to hold referendums.

Blades did not even bother to critique the Budget directly for his listeners, saying “the only thing that should really matter to you is changing the rules of the game, because this game is not in your favour.” Though she nodded her head to agree with Blades’ call for change, University of the West Indies (UWI) Economist and social commentator Indera Sajewan-Ali, did chime in on the Budget. Saying the Budget lacked creativity and was just “business as usual”, she questioned Government’s hopefulness for the increase in energy prices. “This assumption is a fallacy,” said Sajewan-Ali, as both America and China would continue to pursue the development of the shale oil industry which would only increase the supply of oil on the market and keep prices depressed. On top of that is the world’s movement towards renewable energy.