History was likely made last week when TSTT published its annual financial statement containing a "chairman's report" signed by no chairman.

Without explanation, the report bore signatures of two directors. On the TSTT website, the "board of directors" click yielded: "no results matching."

The statement, however, suggested the company's business was proceeding chairlessly, but in hope of "delivering on corporate social benefits, and maintaining its position as the nation's leading telecommunications provider."

Unlike other state enterprises, TSTT was flying on something better than automatic pilot. At least two directors had survived the turbulence of May 24, enough to sign their names and wave a corporate flag.

With 49 per cent owned by Cable and Wireless, TSTT only arguably qualifies as a "State enterprise". It's thus only about halfway afflicted by the paralysis in state-influenced economic affairs, which unexpectedly seized T&T since the change of government.

After eight years of active, even hyperactive, Manning-PNM government, the State, designated driver of the T&T economic train, effectively applied the brake.

The resulting sound has risen to a crescendo of complaint that, after three months of People's Partnership power, Trinidad and Tobago has all but rolled to a standstill.

Power is seen to avail nothing; and nothing is what is seen to be happening; and frustration takes voice. "What is the People's Partnership waiting for?" Sat Maharaj queried, citing the Maha Sabha's electoral support and later "high expectations".

Mr Maharaj described disappointed expectations that "various state boards and overseas missions be replaced with government appointees taken from within the ranks of the coalition".

If State enterprises must wait and see, as political insiders trade the spoils of office, why aren't private business people investing?

Government Budget makers "need to analyse why, specifically, the private sector is not investing now," Central Bank Governor Ewart Williams said last week.

Billed to unfold on Budget Day next week are the rationale and the instrumentality of policy, but also the benchmark of People's Partnership political cohesion. Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, assuming political ownership of the budget, has been consulting with chambers of commerce and others.

As an Express columnist, Planning Minister Mary King had last November sharply portrayed a predicament that has little changed:

"There is money in the banks, inflation rates are coming down, but consumers are not spending, business is not borrowing, and demand for our goods in Caricom has dropped."

Columnist King had appeared to foreshadow the hesitancy of the government in which she is now Minister King: "The Government is also waiting for something to happen, for oil/gas prices to get back to where they were, energy exports to pick back up and foreign investment to return."

The world has since turned. In the epiphany realised on May 24 and July 26, the People's Partnership has manifested as the propitious source of two inter-related benefits: jobs and money.

Talking hard-hat plain talk, contractors and architects, like Mark Raymond last week, look back in anger upon Manning-PNM policy that had left the construction business "decimated". Manning-PNM is history. Mr Raymond demands today that billion-dollar "debts must be promptly settled."

Anxious eyes fix on the vacancies, yet unfilled by People's Partnership appointees, from the boards of State enterprises, agencies, and assorted State entities, to CEPEP contracts and URP arrangements.

The world turned. But some things have as yet stayed the same, or got harder. There is still no easy way to get people with relevant skills and knowledge to sign up for positions that entail adherence to Integrity legislation requirements.

It appears, the teeth of Integrity legislation have been biting so much harder as to disgust or scare off such potential board members as Terrence Farrell. Discussing his own refusal of a Caribbean Airlines directorship last year, Dr Farrell condemned the "stupidity and fascist possibilities of the (Integrity) legislation." While all that remains in effect, the People's Partnership must hasten slowly.

A Hamlet pacing the ramparts of the Twin Towers, Winston Dookeran monologues the number-crunching and the policy-disposing for the contents of his Finance Minister's budget black bag. Every little $1.3 million in recurrent expenditure counts, he muses, addressing the cost of retaining Canadian police expertise.

Elsewhere, Ms King advertises a zero-based analysis of the need for the Manning legacy of special-purpose state enterprises. T&T, she suggests hopefully, may be found to need fewer than Manning did.

Be it resolved, then, that we spend less, and keep fewer jobs to go around for the People's Partnership boys and girls. As the Partners debate this COP moot, hastening slowly is the best they can do.