RESOLUTIONS, REVOLUTIONS, RENAISSANCE - The Peter O'Connor commentary

The rich in our land must learn that they do not need more. Oh, I know that they want more, they feel entitled to more, so they demand more, they take more, and they steal more. 

I am not expecting them to share their wealth with us, or to feel ashamed of what they have gained—although many are well entitled to feel that shame, but that is another discussion. 

The simple truth is that many of the wealthy among us are working, maybe without realizing it, to destroy our country, physically, morally and philosophically. And yet these are the people who will tell you, along with their bankers, financiers and attorneys, that they are really developing the country.

One only has to look at the evidence coming out of the recent Commissions of Inquiry to understand the untrammeled “right” that moneyed people have taken upon themselves to literally con middle-income and poor people out of their savings. 

Long before CLICO and HCU we had International Trust, SWAIT, Dover Plan and others, all stripping ordinary people of their money, and the perpetrators walking away, wealthy.

It is very difficult for us ordinary people to bring these wealthy scammers to heel, far less to justice. They are the financiers of the politicians, and for that reason, none shall have to account. 

As we all know, that is the story of Section 34. So the government, meaning the taxpayers, will give everyone back the money they deposited with these rich people, and the perpetrators will walk away, unscathed, defiantly unashamed, with their wealth. They will pay back nothing. 

We can do almost nothing to make our banking and financial systems more accountable, more just, and less available to the plunderers who will come around again, when all this has quieted down. And the plunderers will continue to walk among the politicians, top attorneys, judges and ambassadors.

But when it comes to saving our land, or what is left of it, from the plunderers who rape our forests and hillsides with the blessings of our politicians, we are not so impotent. 

Two things must be understood here: the first is a growing genuine awareness that our natural heritage is in fact a real and valuable heritage. The second is that there is available to us a huge amount of international support which is dedicated to saving the planet, and they will help, along with their governments, to ensure that we pay more than lip service to those international environmental treaties we have signed.

So, my Prime Minister, I am putting you on notice regarding our land, our grandchildren’s land: My New Year’s Resolution, which I expect you to share, is that we shall save our land, and our natural heritage. And the bonus to you, for your place in our history, is that the legacy of this resolution can be remembered for ever as your legacy. 

I still have your back, Kamla, but I will only be there while you walk the road of this legacy. Should you decide to follow the path along which you are being led, by your friends and party financiers who own bulldozers and excavators, you will become aware that the breach of this resolution will bring a revolution beyond your comprehension, and indeed, theirs! 

No need to set Jack after me for this—this will be a peaceful revolution which can, and will, bring legal and illegal quarrying to its knees, and will prevent the continued degradation by your friends, and some criminals of our forests, wetlands, and wildlife. You will feel the shame at every international conference you attend for the next two years, as people who intend to save this planet from friends of yours gather and tell their own governments to scorn you, and to scorn us.

The one who owns a hotel in Tobago which he markets as a Nature Sanctuary, even as his wealth can outlast your own treasury in the courts of appeal (I am paraphrasing your Attorney General here), cannot utterly degrade thousands of acres of forest lands between the village of Matura, and the world famous turtle nesting site at Matura Bay, and pose as one concerned about the environment. 

If he does not begin restitution of that forest, as required by law and his license (presumably he has one?) his sanctuary hotel will be blanked by visitors. It is that simple!

We are going to save our natural heritage in the forests of Matura, the Arima Valley and the rest of the Northern Range, and you and your government must understand this.

So please adopt this Resolution, to create a Renaissance of nature in our land, like Costa Rica and Dominica have done—to their eternal credit, legacy and profit, for all their citizens!

You can do this!