Caribbean & Central America - January 2016 (ISSN 1741-4458)

*** KAMLA’S DOMINANCE OF T&T OPPOSITION REINFORCED. Despite having led the People’s Partnership (PP) alliance to defeat in the 7 September Trinidad & Tobago general election, former prime minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar (2010-2015) maintains her ascendancy over the United National Congress (UNC), the main component of the PP. The People’s National Movement (PNM) defeated the PP by 23 seats to 18 after Kamla had waited until the last possible moment to call an election.

Following its electoral defeat, the UNC held internal elections in early December in which Persad-Bissessar was challenged for the leadership of the party by Roodal Moonilal, the former minister of housing and urban development and the Leader of Government Business in the lower house, and by Vasant Bharath, the former minister of trade, industry, investment, and communications. Neither made any significant dent in the former prime minister’s support. In the 5 December leadership election, Persad-Bissessar secured 15,477 votes against Moonilal’s 1,466 and just 1,102 for Bharath.

Having secured her domestic flank, the former prime minister now has to re-establish herself as an effective leader of the opposition, and in this she is likely to be helped by the economic cycle, in particular by the collapse in oil and gas prices. In the week following Persad-Bissessar’s triumph over her UNC challengers, natural gas prices fell to US$1.894 per MMBtu (British thermal units in millions), their lowest level since September 2001 and well below the budget figure of US$2.75 per MMBtu. In the same week, the price of West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil fell to below US$35 a barrel against an original 2015 budget figure of US$80 per barrel. In June 2014, the price of WTI was US$106 per barrel. The T&T energy sector has contributed on average 40% of gross domestic product (GDP) growth since 2008.

In an address to the nation at the turn of the year, Prime Minister Keith Rowley emphasized the difficulties caused by the collapse in oil and gas prices, as well as pointing out that oil production had fallen from 90,000 barrels per day in 2010 to 80,000 barrels per day in 2015. He said that there was no alternative but for the government to borrow more and that, added to the last five years, “this would mean ten years of heavy deficit spending and explosive growth in the national debt burden.”

Persad-Bissessar’s response was to say that Rowley had done nothing more than “exacerbate anxiety and instability” with his speech and that he had “no understanding or idea of how to manage the present economic challenges”. This is clearly the ground over which the political battle will be fought for the foreseeable future. Persad-Bissessar said: “The private sector needs to know what the government’s development agenda and plans are if they are to align their strategic plan to the direction intended by the state.”

*** GUYANA REBUILDS ARMY RESERVE. Guyana’s new APNU (A Partnership for National Unity) government under Prime Minister David Granger, a retired army brigadier, has responded to Venezuela’s renewed territorial claims by reactivating the Guyana People’s Militia (GPM) and recruiting 1,500 reservists.

*** SKN FISCAL PROSPECTS BOOSTED BY CITIZENSHIP PROGRAMME. St Kitts & Nevis’s Prime Minister Timothy Harris told parliament on 15 December that revenue from SKN’s citizenship by investment (CBI) programme would surpass the 2015 budget by 42.3%, helping to boost the recurrent account surplus to EC$222.1m (US$82m), 16% above budget. When in opposition, Dr Harris’ Team Unity had dismissed the CBI as a “slush fund” at the disposal of former prime minister Denzil Douglas (1995-2015).