ROAD MAP PROMISE
Prime Minister Patrick Manning is fooling no one when he insists that Trinidad and Tobago will be a developed country by the year 2020. That year was never chosen because it was a realistic time frame. It was chosen because it made a catchy title — "Vision 2020." It is an historical fact, however, that every country which has made the transition from developing to developed status in the 20th century — countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, South Korea — took 30 years to do so. And the populations in these nations all had the advantage of centuries of cultural traditions behind them. That being said, we do hope that the Draft National Strategic Plan and its 28 accompanying reports provide a cogent and pragmatic road map to achieving developed country status. It has long been a lament in Trinidad and Tobago that, given our resources and technical skills, we should be doing much better than we are. Instead, against all logic, we have a murder rate that ranks among the highest in the world, a poverty rate approaching 40 percent, high infant mortality, rising HIV rates, and other problems which sit ill with our relatively immense wealth. This being the case, it is reasonable to conclude that our shortcomings lie in things other than resources or skills. The shortcoming may be philosophical, in that our understanding of reality makes us ill-fitted to come to grips with our fundamental problems. Or it may be political, in that our methods of negotiating the needs of different groups do not help the whole society move forward. Or it may be cultural, in that our values and ways of living undermine progress. Or, most likely, it may be some combination of all three. The main advantage of the Draft National Strategic Plan, therefore, is that it can help concentrate the national mind. If the Vision 2020 committee and its sub-committees have done their job properly, the Government now has specific goals in every area of national life to achieve within a set timeframe. And what this means — again assuming that the committees have done their job properly — is that the populace now has an official measure by which it can praise or criticise the government for reaching, or failing to reach, these goals. This is exactly as it must be, and Mr Manning has promised that the plans would not "sit on shelves, collecting dust" but would be implemented. However, if he imagines that he can lead Trinidad and Tobago to developed country status without ruffling any feathers, he had better think again. After all, we can state with confidence that what we have been trying so far has not worked. This means that we cannot reach developed country status without significantly changing the status quo. However, there are certain social attributes of developed societies which are strongly resisted by influential individuals and groups amongst us. This will affect certain policy measures essential to development — the Draft Gender Policy being one example. Negotiating these barriers on the road to developed country ranking will thus be a huge political challenge for the government.
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"ROAD MAP PROMISE"