00:00The United National Congress made promises on the 2025 election campaign trail in a vacuum
00:06and has struggled to meet some of those promises, so says political scientist Dr. Vishnu Raghunath,
00:12noting, for instance, the 10% increase of public servants, which was agreed to,
00:17but the payout in full has been a problem.
00:20But he notes that the government's manifesto does not contain timelines for deliverables,
00:26and so he expects the next four years to be a continued rollout.
00:31We're still looking forward to things like diversification of the economy.
00:35We have not yet seen significant movement in that direction.
00:41Agriculture, it was something that we thought would have been put,
00:46at least to make, give us greater food security.
00:50Dr. Raghunath believes initiatives that would propel people into agriculture need to be in focus.
00:55What we saw coming from the previous budgets and whatever else,
01:01to how we commented this budget, the last budget,
01:05literally, philosophically, nothing really has changed significantly.
01:12The government campaigned on crime,
01:15but Dr. Raghunath does not believe that they have managed it effectively.
01:19The Prime Minister and the Police Commissioner and everybody else will talk about
01:24the statistics and show that there were less murders this year than last year,
01:29and those sorts of things.
01:31But, and this is a big but,
01:34I think over the last year,
01:37the fear of crime has increased significantly.
01:42He tells us part of that is due to the state of emergency,
01:46added to the fact that crimes like home invasions and robberies continue.
01:50He also says the negative impact it could have on investor confidence.
01:54The government passed the stand-your-ground legislation,
01:57but a political scientist says many people dare not confront criminals,
02:02and many households do not have the ability to do so,
02:05as the access to guns is still heavily managed by the state.
02:09As for the SOE, he tells us,
02:12if it stays, it has to be with the purpose of piling on the pressure on criminal elements.
02:17With limited impact of the military, for instance,
02:22doing raids and whatever else,
02:24I mean, we're not seeing that real impact.
02:27And the question is, what have they been really been doing?
02:31I don't know.
02:32He is questioning why, since the closing down of CPAP and URP,
02:36amid allegations of corruption,
02:38nothing has come from that in terms of people being held to account under the law.
02:43But apart from that...
02:45But what happens to those people who were on the...
02:50I mean, literally doing that and earning their living on that?
02:55Dr. Ragunas calls year one a period of adjustment, of settling in.
03:00We are now moving from that adjustment now into looking to deliverance.
03:05Dr. Ragunas is hoping to see more support for micro, small and medium enterprises,
03:10a better judicial system that would bring perpetrators to justice in a timely manner,
03:16the creation of jobs,
03:17and a better social safety net for the more vulnerable, to list a few.
03:23Alicia Boucher, TV6 News.
03:25Change read.
03:25jedembes.
03:27All right.
03:28All right.
03:28So, let's start our thoughts at the profile of this.
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