Sunday, March 27, 2011

Things fall apart - the Peter O'Connor column

The real and perceived administrative missteps of the Government are not sufficient reason for us to tear apart our country. That is an indisputable fact.

For all of the hysteria, protests and shouting, what has really been “done” by this Government that is so wrong? 

Indeed, where things were wrong, they tended to be quickly “righted”, with an apology. I accept that we all wanted, and deserved, more than an apology in a couple of the matters. But, the issues which made us rise up were adapted or changed. So why are we all so angry?

I know that a big part of it all is coming out of the labour disputes which this Government inherited from the PNM. 

Actually, “inherited” is the wrong word, for while the PNM had ignored labour, and had a stated policy during good economic times that to “grant wage increases to labour would cause inflation”. The labour movement took this with grace and seemed never to object to that.

We allowed, without complaint, demonstration, sick-outs or blue tsunamis and black Mondays, the previous government to spend all of our money on the most unnecessary and unwarranted bling to bolster Patrick Manning’s ego.

Ignoring steelband, calypso, tassa, chutney and Carnival, Manning created, with millions of our dollars, the Divine Echoes, the National Symphony Orchestra, NAPA, SAPA (still incomplete), the tall, empty buildings downtown, for which we are still paying, the wasteful, incomplete, and probably never-to-be used, because of the defects, Brian Lara Stadium. 

While all of this was being built by foreign labour housed in slave-camps, our own labour movement (one of the now-vociferous leaders holding several directorships overseeing these buildings), accepted, without complaint, that any wage increase for local labour would be “inflationary”.

But now that the disgraced PNM has demitted office, everyone is demanding that they be paid the money which the PNM refused to even discuss with them. 

And when the Police Service abandoned their posts, we could not find our voices to condemn them. 

When the doctors in San Fernando abandoned the sick who were poor (the sick who were rich were treated in the doctors’ private clinics) we decided to criticise the Government and the Minister of Health. 

If any doctor, or indeed former CEO Paula Chester Cumberbatch, whom I know and admire, has been treated unfairly, they have access to redress, and they will get what redress they deserve. 

Those who have died, possibly due to the negligence, have no redress. Those who suffer and may die because of the doctors’ refusal to work will have no redress. 

What in the world is wrong with us, that we allow this level of “dispute” and intransigence to sway us into condemning everything?

While Rowley is claiming—quite erroneously—that Jack Warner is “calling out the army”, our institutions and our infrastructure are collapsing around us. 

While Rowley and the PNM slip backward at its highly touted Convention, where the man who sold them out of government instructs Party members not to vote, they try to stir trouble in the country instead of understanding that they are failing in opposition worse than they failed in government.

Due to the neglect of the PNM over their reign, our main source of water is about to fail. 

If the Caroni Water Treatment Plant fails, Rowley and Imbert will be the first to say that it did not happen on their watch. But it was PNM negligence that has brought the plant on the verge of collapse. 

The same holds true all through Petrotrin, where rusting storage tanks would be condemned in any first world country, where offshore platforms cannot produce oil because they too are collapsing into the sea. 

This is the “PNM Country” where President’s House collapsed under its own rot, and the government never cared to repair it. Remember all the collapsing culverts under the Solomon Hochoy Highway? Well they have finally been repaired.

Things are happening around us. 

Roads and bridges are being repaired. People played Mas’ on the stage instead of in NAPA, Biche School is being opened, and people’s voices can be heard. 

When did Patrick Manning ever listen to us, or take advice from anyone other than Pena and Hart? When people complained to Imbert, he set off yapping about how stupid we were. 

When people complain to Jack Warner, he listens and says he will fix the problems, and that is why hundreds of people seek out Jack.

We have a choice folks. We can either be helpfully critical of the Government as it tries to dig out of the rubble of PNM mismanagement, or we can tear it down.

And replace it with……..?

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Jai & Sero

Jai & Sero

Our family at home in Toronto 2008

Our family at home in Toronto 2008
Amit, Heather, Fuzz, Aj, Jiv, Shiva, Rampa, Sero, Jai