Caribbean & Central America - September 2017 (ISSN 1741-4458)

Two years after coming to power, Trinidad & Tobago’s People’s National Movement (PNM) government, led by Prime Minister Keith Rowley, is facing mounting popular dissatisfaction with its performance. The country’s recent poor economic performance no doubt has a lot to do with this, but so does the perception that the government is not getting on top of the problem of rising crime. Interestingly, corruption, another perennial problem recently highlighted by the arrest of former Attorney General Anand Ramlogan (2010-2015), does not appear to be a major concern for the public even though the government’s performance in combating corruption was considered to be ‘bad’ or ‘very bad’ by 79% of respondents questioned in a recent poll.

The economy has contracted in each of the past three years, largely as a result of the contraction in the energy sector which accounts for 35% of GDP. Prices have fallen dramatically since 2014, but that is not the whole story. There has also been a fall in domestic production volumes. According to data from BP’s Statistical Review of World Energy, in 2016 natural gas production dropped by 13.2%, to 3.3m cubic feet per day (cf/d), down from a peak of 4.3m cf/d in 2010, while oil production fell by 11.2% to 96,500 barrels per day (bpd), compared with a peak of 177,500 bpd in 2006.

In late April both Moody’s and Standard & Poor’s ratings agencies downgraded Trinidad’s credit rating. On 26 April, Moody’s marked it down to Ba1 from Baa3, following S&P’s 21 April markdown from A- to BBB+. The S&P rating is still considered to be investment grade; the Moody’s rating is classified as junk-bond status. For Moody’s, debt was the key issue. However, although the International Monetary Fund(IMF)’s latest review suggests that the economy continued to contract in the first half of 2017, there are hopes that the downturn has now bottomed out. Local data from the central bank indicates that both natural gas and oil production remained relatively stable during the first half of 2017, and the IMF has projected an upturn in natural gas production for the second half.

The economic difficulties have, of course, had adverse repercussions for government finances. As a share of GDP, the IMF estimated that public debt stood at just under 30% in its last full country report in mid-2016. But this is expected to jump to 38.6% by the end of 2017 and to 78.7% of GDP in 2021.

Although in its July review the IMF welcomed government efforts to boost revenue, it cautioned that the impact of things like asset sales will fade over time and that more extensive efforts to contain current spending were nececessary in order to reduce the fiscal deficit – which is already in double-digits as a share of GDP.

This is not a message that the PNM government will be happy to hear given its latest opinion poll ratings. A Louis Bertrand poll, published in the first week of September, found that 83% of respondents believed that Trinidad & Tobago is “going in the wrong direction”. Only 32% said that they thought Prime Minister Keith Rowley was doing a good job, 11 percentage points below the 43% approval rating for opposition leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

The most serious problem for the country was seen to be crime and violence, cited by 66% of respondents. The country has the highest incidence of violent crime in the Eastern Caribbean, with 463 homicides in 2016. This equates to 35 murders per 100,000 residents. The prevalence of criminal gangs is behind much of the crime. The police estimated that in late 2015 there were 147 gangs with 1,698 members, and that these gangs were responsible for 34% of all murders in the country. One bright spot, however, has been the reduction in kidnappings from around 100 per year seven years ago to around ten per year now.

After crime, economic issues such as unemployment and the cost of living were cited, respectively, by 15% and 9% of respondents as the most pressing issues. However, corruption was listed as the most serious issue by just 3%.

The government’s performance on all these issues was seen to be wanting, with 75% saying that the government was not performing well with regard to efforts to combat crime and violence, 83% saying the same on unemployment, and 79% on corruption.

If there was comfort for the government it was in the apparent understanding that the country’s poor economic performance was in part the fault of either the previous government or factors beyond government control such as the weakness in oil prices. Corruption and incompetence on the part of the previous government was cited by 39% as the main reason for the economic problems; the fall in oil prices was cited by 31%. The present government’s corruption and/or incompetence was cited as the main factor by 30%.

Another comforting factor for the government was the fact that its own core support seems to be holding up reasonably well. Some 53% of Afro-Trinidadians said that they approved of the job being done by the prime minister as against 16% Indo-Trinidadians. The converse was also true, with 62% of Indo-Trinidadians approving of Persad-Bissessar’s performance as against 43% of Afro-Trinidadians.

The PNM might gain some additional political capital from Trinidad’s latest political drama, the arrest of Anand Ramlogan, who was attorney general in the previous People’s Partnership (PP) government until forced to resign in 2015.

The allegation is that Ramlogan offered government support to David West’s appointment as chairman of the Police Complaints Authority (PCA) if he withdrew as a witness in a defamation case between Ramlogan and Rowley. Ramlogan was contesting Rowley’s allegation that he improperly prevented the extradition on corruption charges of two government-supporting businessmen to the US through the introduction of the so-called Section 34 law which prevented prosecution - except in ‘blood crimes’ - of people whose trial had been delayed for ten years after the alleged offence had been committed.

West reported Ramlogan to the police for attempted witness tampering, and the investigation has been proceeding slowly since January 2015. Following his arrest on 29 August, Ramlogan was released on bail and the case has been adjourned until 11 January 2018.

However, Ramlogan’s arrest has been taken as a positive sign that the government is serious about corruption by only 45% of respondents to the Louis Bertrand poll. The reason for this may be found in some of the press reporting on the issue, which has underlined the murkiness of Trinidadian party politics. For instance, in a report on the latest developments, The Trinidad Guardian noted: “West is said to be closely affiliated to members of the Syrian/Lebanese community who are strong supporters and financiers of the ruling People’s National Movement political party. Some of these individuals have questionable credibility as to how they obtained their massive wealth, with rumours and proven cocaine busts linking them to cocaine transhipment in Trinidad and Tobago.” Public cynicism has deep roots.