The UNC published its manifesto on uncmanifesto.com ahead of the April 2025 general election. Five pillars. Dozens of specific commitments spanning economic management, public safety, energy, social protection, and governance reform. After winning office, the new government adopted the manifesto as its policy framework in June 2025. Eleven months later, it is possible to sort the promises into two categories that tell a clear story: the things that cost the Treasury money were done quickly, and the things that required building something new were not.
This is a scorecard, not an editorial. The evidence for each entry comes from public records, parliamentary statements, press reporting, and the government's own announcements. Where a promise was kept, it is marked kept. Where it was broken or stalled, that is noted with the same precision. The pattern that emerges from the full list is more revealing than any individual entry.
The Populist Wins
The government moved fast on consumer relief and public-sector wages - the commitments that put money directly into people's hands or reduced what they pay at the pump and the grocery.
Super gasoline was cut by $1 per litre. The reduction took effect quickly and remains in place. Trinbagonians noticed. It was the kind of measure that shows up every time you fill a tank - visible, tangible, politically effective. Promise kept.
VAT was removed from a basket of basic food items. The intention was to reduce the cost of living for lower-income households. The removal was implemented through the Finance Act following the October 2025 budget. Promise kept.
The Property Tax Act was repealed. Finance Minister Tancoo called it "a blight inflicted on the people of this nation" during the budget presentation. The repeal was part of the broader fiscal package. Whatever one thinks of property taxation as policy - and the IMF has repeatedly recommended broadening the tax base - the manifesto said it would go, and it went. Promise kept.
The Tobago Revenue and Recovery Authority, or TTRA, was repealed. This was a quieter measure, less discussed on the talk shows, but it fulfilled a specific manifesto commitment. Promise kept.
The 10% public-sector wage increase covering the 2014-2016 and 2017-2019 bargaining periods was agreed with the PSA on December 2, 2025. Back pay totals $3.8 billion. Public servants had waited over a decade for this adjustment. The Prime Minister promised an initial cash advance before Christmas 2025, with arrears structured over time. Promise kept - though as this publication noted in the Budget Scorecard, no budgetary allocation was made for the $3.8 billion. The money must come from somewhere.
Eighteen thousand laptops were distributed to students. The programme was executed. Promise kept.
Trinidad and Tobago was removed from the EU tax blacklist on February 17, 2026, following reforms including a new Special Economic Zone framework. This was a significant achievement with real consequences for the financial sector. Promise kept.
Each of these items shares a common feature. They required a decision - often a single Cabinet decision or a legislative amendment - rather than the construction of new institutional capacity. They are the things a government can do by spending money or by removing an existing obligation. They are not small accomplishments. But they are the easier half of governing.
The Structural Failures
The manifesto's more ambitious commitments - the ones that required building systems, creating jobs, or delivering complex energy projects - have produced a different record.
The pension tax exemption was announced effective January 1, 2026. As of April, pensioners report they are still being taxed. The measure was proclaimed but not implemented in practice. Announced, not delivered.
The manifesto promised the creation of 50,000 jobs. In reality, the government fired between 16,000 and 20,000 workers from CEPEP, URP, and the National Reforestation and Watershed Programme between June and September 2025. The National Recruitment Drive launched in October 2025, promising 20,000 positions. As of late February 2026, 1,801 had been hired - on three-month contracts, doing the same roadside work the terminated programmes had employed people to do. The net result is a significant job loss, not a gain. The $475 million Employment Fund allocated to support the transition has produced no public accounting of how much was actually disbursed. When Finance Minister Tancoo was asked directly, he replied that he did not have that information at his disposal. Divide the fund by the 20,000 target and you get roughly $2,000 per month per worker - below the minimum wage. The arithmetic never worked.
The Guaracara refinery restart was a centrepiece of the manifesto's energy vision. Eleven months later, the refinery remains in assessment. No restart date has been announced. No construction timeline has been shared. The facility sits where it has sat since Petrotrin's closure in 2018.
Dragon gas has followed a trajectory that would be difficult to parody. The Prime Minister declared the project dead in May 2025. By September she had reversed course. By October, a new OFAC licence had been secured - though on terms that shifted control from Port of Spain to Washington. Then Venezuela suspended the licence from its end. The project sits in a state that is neither alive nor dead, dependent on geopolitical forces that Trinidad and Tobago does not control. The manifesto treated Dragon as a deliverable. It is, at best, a hope.
The National Investment Fund bond - a $1 billion instrument backed by the government's First Citizens shares - was promised for issuance by Q2 of fiscal 2026. The deadline was March 31. It passed without issuance. The Guardian's analysis found the underlying share value barely covers the instrument's face amount, leaving no margin if the stock price declines.
The Crime Question
The manifesto included a 60-point crime plan. The phrase "structural reform" appeared throughout - a new approach to policing, intelligence-led operations, community intervention, and judicial overhaul. What was delivered looks nothing like what was described.
The government's primary crime response has been the State of Emergency - the same blunt instrument it spent years condemning when the PNM used it. The SoE grants extraordinary powers to the police and military, suspends certain constitutional protections, and has a mixed track record of lasting impact on violent crime. It is a crisis tool, not a structural reform.
Stand Your Ground legislation was passed, expanding the legal right to use lethal force in self-defence. Whatever its merits, it was not part of the 60-point plan and does not constitute the systemic policing reform the manifesto envisioned.
Zones of Special Operations - ZOSO - have failed to produce the results the government projected. The zones were meant to combine heavy police presence with social intervention. The social intervention component has been largely absent.
None of the 60 points has been published as a checklist with status updates. The crime plan exists as a manifesto promise, not as a public accountability document. Trinbagonians cannot check progress because the government has not provided a framework against which to check it. Our Promise Tracker attempts to fill that gap.
The Pattern
Lay the two categories side by side and the picture is stark. The giveaways were delivered. The structural reforms were not.
Fuel subsidy reduction - delivered. VAT removal - delivered. Property Tax repeal - delivered. Wage increase - delivered. These are consumption-side measures. They put money in pockets or reduce costs. They are politically popular, fiscally expensive, and institutionally simple.
Job creation - failed. Refinery restart - stalled. Dragon gas - suspended. NIF bond - missed deadline. Pension tax exemption - announced but not implemented. Crime reform - replaced with emergency powers. These are supply-side commitments. They require building capacity, executing complex projects, coordinating across institutions, and sustaining effort beyond the announcement.
The distinction matters because it raises a question the government has not been asked directly: did the UNC campaign on promises it knew it could not keep?
The manifesto was not a rough sketch. It was a detailed policy document with specific targets and timelines. Fifty thousand jobs. A refinery restart. A 60-point crime plan. A billion-dollar bond by Q2. These are not aspirational statements. They are commitments with built-in accountability. The fact that the populist measures were delivered quickly suggests the government is capable of execution when it chooses to prioritise. The structural failures suggest either a lack of capacity, a lack of will, or a calculation that voters would remember the gas price before they remembered the job numbers.
There is a less cynical reading. Structural reforms take time. Eleven months is not enough to restart a refinery or resolve a cross-border gas dispute. Energy projects depend on global markets and foreign governments. Job creation at scale requires institutional infrastructure that did not exist when the new government took office.
Both readings can be true simultaneously. The government may have genuinely intended to deliver on every commitment while also understanding that the popular ones would come first and the difficult ones might not come at all. Political manifestos are built on this ambiguity. The question is whether Trinbagonians accept the trade.
The Budget Scorecard tracks the fiscal commitments. The Promise Tracker monitors the full manifesto. The data on CEPEP and URP workers documents who lost their jobs and what replaced them. Together, they form a record that does not depend on any party's version of events.
Eleven months is not a full term. But it is long enough to see which promises a government treats as urgent and which ones it treats as optional. In Trinidad and Tobago, the pattern has been consistent across administrations: spend first, build later, and hope the next budget cycle covers the gap.
The UNC manifesto is not an exception to that pattern. It is the latest example of it.
Sources
- UNC Manifesto 2025: uncmanifesto.com (adopted as government policy, June 2025)
- Ministry of Finance: Budget Statement 2026 - "T&T First" (October 13, 2025)
- Trinidad Guardian: "National Recruitment Drive falls short: 20,000 jobs promised, 1,801 people hired" (February 2026)
- Trinidad Guardian: "$3.8B back pay for public servants - CPO, PSA agree to 10% wage hike" (December 2025)
- Trinidad Guardian: "Behind the OFAC licence: Details of new Dragon Gas terms under wraps" (2026)
- Trinidad Express: "Public servants to get 10% pay rise" (December 2025)
- Trinidad Express: "Tancoo: No information on Employment Fund disbursement" (2026)
- EU Council: "Taxation: Council updates the EU list" (February 17, 2026)
- IMF: Article IV Mission Concluding Statement - Trinidad and Tobago (February 10, 2026)
- Newsday: "Tancoo: $475M to help fund 20,000 new jobs" (October 2025)
- Newsday: "CEPEP workers terminated - 10,500 let go" (June 2025)
- Newsday: "URP workers terminated with immediate effect" (September 2025)
- Trinidad Express: "Stand Your Ground bill passed in Parliament" (2026)
- Trinidad Guardian: "PM: Dragon gas deal dead" (May 2025)
- Trinidad Guardian: "NIF bond deadline passes without issuance" (March 2026)
- Trinidad Express: "Pensioners still being taxed despite exemption announcement" (2026)
- CSO: Labour Force Statistics, April-September 2025
- PwC Trinidad: National Budget 2026 Analysis
- Ministry of Energy: Guaracara Refinery Status Updates (2025-2026)