Whether it is money owing by the previous administration, promotions ignored by the previous government, promises unfulfilled by the PNM, or repairs or buildings never completed by the people who should have completed them—we all want it all right now!
I have no doubt about the validity of all these claims being made against the new government.
I know that the PNM never paid local contractors and consultants on time (even as the foreign firms were paid “up front” before work started).
I am confident that they owed pharmaceutical suppliers millions for goods delivered, and I truly feel for all those persons whose promotions were never ratified, whose pay increases lay languishing on some PNM desk, and for the users of buildings still incomplete because the previous government was absorbed with Waterfront, NAPA, Palace, Tarouba and the Guanapo Church.
But you “took it” for years, folks. It is not now that your bills are unpaid, that your increases are not ratified, or that your structures stand incomplete.
When the people who were responsible for your suffering and your inconveniences were in power, you may have complained, but like you did not dare to demand your rights.
It looks like PNM abuse is something you were prepared to tolerate forever, like some long suffering woman whose “man” will consistently abuse and ignore her, and who was afraid to speak up and demand what is rightfully hers.
But since the citizens of this country showed that they had the courage and the power to remove the PNM from office, all of you who suffered so long have suddenly found voice to actually threaten the new government with “shut down” unless your demands and grievances are settled NOW!
And the strange thing is that the new government was not even aware of your predicaments, and only discovered these huge debts and liabilities and inefficiencies when they moved into office.
They had to express their surprise, as wave after wave of revelations of the PNM’s contempt for local contractors, consultants, workers, and suppliers became known.
The PNM certainly never showed all of these debts in any balance sheets. In fact, Karen Teshiera denied the debts to contractors—arrogantly so!
So, the rest of the population, and even those who shared the PNM’s abuse with each other, must have felt a degree of sympathy for all those who had been waiting on the PNM government for the monies owed to them.
I feel for you too, and I hope you all get paid, promoted and accommodated soon.
But I do not support you suddenly picking up a big stick and threatening to put “bus’ head” on the new government, and stop supplies, and work to rule and shut down the country.
Why you did not get on like this against the people who have you suffering so today?
And it is not like this new government had nothing to do but to attend to your claims - claims which were not even known to them when they came into office.
Before they were even sworn into office the country was inundated with flooding, another legacy of the neglect which the PNM imposed upon us all. And while cleaning up the first floods, more came, and more efforts had to be directed away from setting up office to support long suffering citizens and businesses which were flooded again.
And they did something to restore a part of our democracy which the PNM had denied us for years: They held local government elections.
Many of you may think this was not as important as paying you. But actually it was, and it was a commitment they had given us. “Paying you” was not a commitment, mostly because they were not aware that the PNM had not paid you.
I do not agree with some columnists—who should know better—who are giving the new government deadlines to satisfy the columnists’ priorities.
If the PNM were still around the Solomon Hochoy Highway would still be a one-lane road where those sinkholes collapsed some weeks ago, with Imbert bleating about “Acks of Gord”.
So check who is in the background for each of the causes demanding retribution NOW.
You will find that, just as they did in 1987, agents and provocateurs of the PNM are promoting issues apparently on your behalf.
But if they cared about you, you would not be in this position today. You stood up in May and found the courage to remove the people who had abused you from office.
Do not let them dupe you now into sabotaging the very change you had voted for. Wake up, T&T, the PNM is using you to fight their tabanca. Do not be fooled.
Peter's columns also appear in NEWSDAY.
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