"Hear the people..!" - the Peter O'Connor column

Hear the People, Hear the People. This must become the new mantra of the government at this time.

The warning alarms are going off all around most of our government ministers, who are not hearing them, and not listening to the increasing concerns of the population.

Our concerns are the several missteps and misstatements being taken and spoken, and the fact that ministers are not acknowledging that these are reasons for us to be concerned. So, I ask my government to hear us, not to shut us out right now.

It is not my intention here and now to list the several bloopers—spoken and committed—made by the government since coming into power. My concern is that these, rather than diminishing as you all become more familiar with your duties, responsibilities, and the understanding of consensus and joint responsibilities, are becoming more regular, and indeed, more damning.

In the early days of your administration, you were more inclined to review bad decisions and stupid statements, and try to correct or apologize for some of them. However, recently you are tending to slam doors and phones when the people or the media question your decisions and your statements.

You should be aware that there is no sanctuary in refusing to talk about what the people want to know. That is what caused Patrick Manning to abdicate and hand his sinking ship of state to you.

He tried to conceal the corruption and incompetence at UDeCOTT, at NHA, Petrotrin, CLICO and the scandal of the church he was building at Guanapo. But the people demanded their right to know what was going on, and so Manning ran and left you with the sinking ship.

Hear me please! I am on your side.

If Keith Rowley had “won” the election, I would be on his side. If UNC alone, or COP, TOP or NJAC had won, I would be supporting them. I will support a government which is trying to carry us forward, first, to lift us out of the mess in which Manning left us, and then to take us to a destiny which is there for us embrace and appreciate.

And for you all in government, this is your opportunity for your Legacy: To put back into our lives a society of decency, goodwill and properly functioning institutions.

However, you will not achieve this if you try to defend the indefensible as Manning and his sycophants had tried to do.

To set the stage, I want to belatedly congratulate Kamla for the first anniversary of her victory as Political Leader of the UNC. Celebration was warranted, for hers was a genuine victory, over two persons challenging her for that post.

However, I beg of you all not to “celebrate” the alleged victory over the PNM come May 24th this year. That was not your victory; that was you walking into a trap set for you by the PNM.

History repeats itself: In 1797, British troops landed at Invaders’ Bay to seize Trinidad from Spain. The Spanish, with no desire to hold on to this malaria-ridden piece of bush with no gold, capitulated without firing a shot.

But, eventually, the island developed, first with cocoa, then with sugar, and finally with oil and gas. Your Peoples’ Partnership, loosely organized at best, “came ashore” to see what you had captured.

You discovered CLICO, threatening to sink the economy, billions owed to contractors, suppliers, billions owed in VAT refunds, a labour movement betrayed for years, and dozens of “sweetheart contracts” hurriedly awarded to PNM friends and future senators.

You found a health service in disarray, a country flooding with every rain shower, rampant crime as gangs killed for the right to collect URP dollars. And more corruption, crime and incompetence are being revealed daily.

I sympathize with your desire to keep pointing back at all of these travesties which you are now responsible for healing. But you must put all that behind you. You must stop justifying your own bloopers by reminding us of the PNM. You must stop making the bloopers.

For every appointment you wish to make, for every action to be taken, for every statement to be made (and decide by whom!) you must ask the following: What would we have said if the PNM had done, said, or appointed this thing or person. Only by this process will you understand the enormity of some of what you have done and are trying to do.

And stop campaigning! Ignore all of the trivia you are raising, and raise genuine major issues only. This will keep you out of trouble, with the Speaker and with the media.

Hear the People, Hear the People, Hear the people! And be guided by what you hear. We will walk this difficult road together.