Prime Minister Patrick Manning attacked Caroni East MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh at a poliotical meeting in Chaguanas, calling Gopeesingh's charge of racial discrimination "irresponsible".
He said Trinidad and Tobago is a difficult country to run because of the ethnic and religious mix but he pledged that his government will never play the race card in dealing with those challenges.
Manning accused other parties of using race to advance their politics, saying they will soon get more desperate and make race an issue. "They would call on the race card to try and discredit the PNM, to divide the society."
He told his supporters to banish race as an issue and concentrate on living together in harmony. He said there should be a commitment on the issue. "When we say we want to live together in harmony with people who are different from us, I want it to be a commitment from your heart," said Manning.
He was in what is considered the opposition heartland, the centre city mall car park. And he declared Chaguanas "PNM country".
But that confidence was camouflaged by the high security. Although he was among the PNM faithful, Manning's security detail kept the crowd at a "safe distance" from him.
The same kind of security was evident when the PNM leader arrived for the meeting in a convoy that included eight patrol vehicles.
Manning avoided talk of crime and spent time talking about the draft constitution for Trinidad and Tobago.
"We are not in a hurry", he said. "We want maximum participation by the public. It took three years to develop the framework and it will take two more years to be completed."
Manning said "another round of public consultation on constitutional reform will take place with a view to drafting a Green Paper...Finally we propose to have a Queen's Hall system of public discussions to hammer out the differences, after which a final constitution will be brought to Parliament."
He said the new constitution should reflect the history and culture of the people and suggested that "technocrats and intellectuals" won't create the new document because previous constitutional committees consisting of academics wrote documents that had to be changed after they were presented to Parliament.
"The approach was fundamentally flawed. If you set up academics alone, it will be flawed," he declared.
Manning is hoping the have the new constitution ready in time for the next general election, which is constitutionally due in late 2012. However, he has the prerogative to ask the president to at any time dissolve Parliament and hold fresh elections.
1 comment:
It is encouraging to hear the Prime Minister talk about banishing race from the politricks of T&T. We'll need to see some concrete steps in that direction before we take comfort in the promise though. The PNM wasn't started by African-Trinis alone, but that race card was played very early on. And it has had a pervasive, destructive influence in the Trinidadian polity stemming from a party that was hell bent on its own preservation rather than seeking the national interest of the nation. Sometimes, the national interest requires one to realize when it is time to step aside and let someone else have a crack at leading. Both the ruling party and the opposition party would do well to consider this.
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