“You can’t even use your phone to dial a prayer.”
- Lord Shorty, Money Eh No Problem
If you live in a country where the political leadership repeatedly denied that your economy was in recession, then most likely you live in a country that denies the problem of poverty, the exploitation of labour and the day to day suffering of ordinary people.
In December 2015, the Central Bank of Trinidad and Tobago officially declared the economy as being in a recession. Finally.
This did not come as a surprise to many in the working population since they have felt the economic hardships with rising commodity prices and a near absent market of jobs and job security. While the newspaper headlines track the promised declines and sporadic rises in oil prices, very few economists and media houses have been interested in the real break-down of the purchasing power of everyday people within the last year where what you could have bought with $1,000 TTD dollars is significantly less today.
The recession that we face now had much earlier signs. Since the global financial crisis kick started by the North accelerated the crash of major financial services nationally, the recession today was inevitable. The price in oil became more unpredictable. Instead of confronting the problem head-on with a full disclosure of the state of the economy to the public, wonton spending and corruption became the order of the day, which worked to strengthen monopolies, expand political favouritism and exacerbate inequalities that affect the poor most.
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Speaking to the nation on the state of the economy, the Prime Minister, Dr. Keith Rowley, expressed his disfavour to turn to the IMF. But since this announcement, the Finance Minister Colm Imbert has already made his visit to Washington and solicited the advice of officials of the WTO and IMF. He now joins a long list of Caribbean leaders who refuse to learn from our history and walk through the world on the knee in self-defeat. Our nation has past experiences situation with these prophets of austerity during the financial crisis of the 1980s. Structural adjustment is unhealthy for our nation but what is worse is following directives from advisors alien to your society and culture that never endure the pain of their prescriptions.
Politicians in Trinidad and Tobago believe it is possible to steer our economy out of the crisis by social cuts and piece meal stimulus packages in some sectors without addressing the inequalities that characterize the economy. What does development mean to the grandmother and grandfather subsidizing care for children in households? What does inequality mean from below – the disparity in grocery lists, the safety of communities, the price of burglarproof or the promise of burglars for families?
The situation so far has not been nice. The economy shrank at almost 2 percent in 2015. Energy production is the main driver of the economy. However, the grim picture for oil-reliant countries globally tell us US$30 on the barrel is a good bet. There is a popular idea in our “oil-rich” island that the fuel subsidy that reaches the public at the pumps leads to excess waste and is an extravagant form of welfare. However, there is little conversation nationally on the role of the state and its generosity to national capitalist interests who gain most from charitable fuel subsidies. Low-income families benefit much less from the subsidy than upper income families.
Already, multi-national corporations have begun to think twice about their operations in the island. One day after laid-off workers won a dispute case in the Industrial Court against ArcelorMittal , the company let go 644 workers. The Joint Trade Union Movement (JTUM) holds the view that some corporations are using the recession as an expedient justification to fire workers and trample on the gains of the labour movement. At a labour sensitisation meeting hosted by the Trinidad Youth Council on June 4, 2016, a major sentiment that emerged among some participants were the feelings of fear and vulnerability in the workplace among youth on contract labour, may of whom are on monthly renewed contracts.
While Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro made a one-day trip to Trinidad to detail trade and glass exploration agreements, a quick glance to our close neighbours in Latin America would show the harsh realities of a country between a rock and a hard place socially and economically. But we need not look so far. Venezuelans have been coming to Trinidad and Tobago in large numbers, many arriving on the shores of the southwestern peninsula, searching for jobs and a livelihood in an economy that they believe is better than the one at home. Immigration officials stated that approximately 75 foreigners arrive to the island every two days. As done in many parts of the world, local business owners contract their labour for cheap under hellish conditions. Without care, the exploitation of labour continues and the working class of the local population misplace their anger to people who look different to them but earn and own as much as them in bad working and living conditions.
Violence has also gripped the nation. There were four days in May when 13 people were killed. Increasingly the crimes involve the use of guns and domestic violence murders show the ugliness of the war on women. By mid-May the murder toll reached 180 bodies. Sunity Maharaj, journalist, gave us prophecy as she declared, “When politics fails, people die.”
An improvement in the democratic governance of Trinidad and Tobago would improve the economy because empowering people to feel as a significant actor of their national destiny mobilises the imagination and participation in diverse sectors. This is part of the solution to break our dependence on oil and gas and the perpetual boom and bust cycle of capitalist development. Having our fingers crossed about prices of oil is not a method – alternatives to development are. What appears to be an economic problem is fundamentally a political problem in the nation. In these times, the development of the social sector is most critical…not just an anti-worker and anti-poor discourse of “cuts” and “belt-tightening.”
‘Recession’ is a loaded word that economists in the Central Bank and Chamber of Commerce business classes talk about when they diagnose a symptom of a sick economy without asking questions about its unhealthy ways. Perhaps the greatest contribution of Marxian thought to the world is standpoint theory that understands social and economic relations from the conditions of labour and the worker and not the romance stories of profit and the profiteers of capital. I tell you, a lack of vision will bring no end to the suffering of our people.
In these times of less, workers and the poor suffer more.
Amílcar Sanatan, interdisciplinary artist and writer, is a Research Assistant at the Institute for Gender and Development Studies and coordinator of the UWI Socialist Student Conference at The University of the West Indies, St. Augustine Campus. Reach him on Twitter @amilcarsanatan