LABELLING incoming Prime Minister Stuart Young with Indian nicknames is bad politics and poor strategy.
It would spark a dead-end and senseless race row while sidestepping the critical issues for which Young must be held accountable.
Young is the figurehead of an administration that has permitted the rich to become richer amid a widening wealth gap and growing poverty.
His unrepentant linkage to big business parallels the setting up of monopolies and historic billion-dollar profits by large corporations, including commercial banks.
He is an integral player in a government that believes in failed trickle-down economics, a scheme that only fattens the pockets of the upper class.
Young must also be placed to the sword on the continued decline of the energy sector, which remains Trinidad and Tobago’s economic lifeline.
Finance Minister Colm Imbert recently confessed that his inability to pay Value Added Tax resulted from “cash flow constraints.”
The economy is running on fumes, and the energy sector, for which Young has ministerial responsibility, has been ebbing away without strategic redirection.
The Dragon Gas natural gas project is likely to be a non-starter – especially with the 2027 timeline – because of the gathering hemispheric political storm.
Point Lisas Industrial Estate, once the Caribbean’s manufacturing showpiece, is now a rust belt, with acres of abandoned commodity plants.
The Petrotrin facility remains mothballed after more than six years, and the third attempt at divestment has also collapsed.
Taxpayers pay $500,000 a month to keep the Pointe-a-Pierre plant in working order.
The futile attempts to sell the operations were costly.
A due diligence by Scotiabank – just one of the bureaucratic measures – cost $12 million.
Young has fared no better in his other public offices, especially national security where he presided over a crime epidemic.
His administrative skills, tactical measures, temperament and other leadership abilities must be examined because he is taking up the most significant and demanding job in the land.
His worldview should also be scrutinised since he has been in public life for only a few years, and, before that, was a sheltered backroom professional.
He must be tied to the PNM’s many failed manifesto promises and must expound a programme for national development in a post-energy economy.
He must assure the nation that he has the requisite talent pool to lift the land from the current economic and security hellhole.
The recent attempts to link Young to the country’s diversity must also be properly explored.
Has he assisted Lalbeharry Trace, at Penal, a flood-prone agricultural community where residents annually lose their valuables and are seldom compensated?
Has he helped the vulnerable residents of that and neighbouring districts, who are at the mercy of brutal criminals?
Why has the nearby billion-dollar university campus been allowed to become a white elephant while students of Lalbeharry Trace and other southern communities rent St. Augustine campus?
Has he piloted any industries in the community?
Young must undergo essential and resolute investigation and analysis as he campaigns to become the nation’s leader.
Branding him with Indian names does not help.
