Halloween pumpkins, forex woes, other horrors

Paolo Kernahan

“LET ME know when it reach $300” – instructions from a shopper to the cashier at a grocery. On the conveyor belt was a parade of conservatism – dasheen bush and other modest items. The beep-beep sound of the produce being scanned mimics a hospital heart monitor. As the figure on the outward-facing screen continues its exponential climb, you feel like you’re hyperventilating. Am I going to “kilketay” in this grocery?

I could see where that customer went wrong; packages of pre-cut vegetables were in the mix. Who the hell does she think she is…Jeff Bezos? Perhaps she wanted to treat herself for once. Some people go on holiday to Meeami, others throw caution to the wind and spring for pre-cut carrots and christophene.

Such stark scenes conflict sharply with the portrait of TT spun by this administration. Recently, at a post-budget panel discussion, Finance Minister Colm Imbert said, “I do think people feel that things are better now than they were five or seven years ago.” Imbert also said “…the economy has been growing consistently over the past three years and people are feeling the positive effects of that growth.”

There was no elaboration on who these “people” are. It’s all part of this government’s continued efforts to maintain the illusion – that Trinidad sweet too bad! Tourism Minister Randall Mitchell wants you to travel abroad just to see how nice you have it here. Perhaps he should be the migration minister; he’d have far more success in that field.

Mitchell showed a quality of detachment and self-delusion sustained only by the most powerful devotion to the toxic cult of supremacy. His binary perspectives on the high cost of living in other countries was embarrassing for a cabinet minister. But then, an immunity to embarrassment is a natural by-product of arrogance. The notion of comparing the cost of living in TT to other countries as if they were a monolith falls apart even with casual inquiry.

Sure, we’re surrounded by the trappings of growth – luxury cars, new buildings, grand-opening, grand-closing businesses, etc. Doubting that what I heard was true I had to check for myself to see if the talk of imported Halloween pumpkins was real. Pumpkin lanterns for trick-or-treating bandit; what’s next in the land of what’s next?

These, however, aren’t markers of economic expansion or health, but flourishes of copious consumption. They work seamlessly with the government’s false narrative of increasing economic stability to sustain the artifice of competence.

So when something comes along to threaten the gossamer illusion of economic equilibrium, the government’s response is typically bilious defensiveness. A series of articles published by the Express hauled out into the sunlight the mouldy facts most citizens already know, even though we’ve been told our eyes and experience deceive us.

Several local businessmen, speaking anonymously to skirt the very real threat of political victimisation, revealed the effects of dire forex shortages on their ability to import goods that fall below the definition of basics. We talk about bread-and-butter issues, but one step below are the garlic and “rat cheese” issues. There were predictions of dire shortages that will undoubtedly buffet the most vulnerable in society.

Imbert’s response was a flurry of deflections and red herrings, inferring the Express got it wrong – failed to do basic research. The minister went heavy on the fact that the EximBank facility through which some importers were accessing US money to bring in goods is ostensibly meant to support export-oriented enterprises. The wider access to US currency was just a temporary arrangement made during the pandemic.

None of his protestations matter. The facts are there for all to consume; there’s unmistakable inequity in the distribution of forex, the kind of unfairness that’s bound to show up when supply is scarce. Some will get, others won’t. The category you fall into depends on who you know and the influence you wield. The country isn’t earning enough foreign currency to meet demand so our inexorable decline continues.

Imbert has his malleable statistics; the population has to live with facts. The cost of living climbs daily – average wages remain stagnant (and low). Food prices, transportation costs, housing and healthcare continue their inexorable rise.

This government can always count on the loyalty of diehards, the incompetence of the opposition, the apathy of the wider population, and the Vichy chambers of commerce and PoS-centric business associations. As the illusion continues to disintegrate, though, torn down by the realities citizens face, these protections will matter less.

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