Address by Mr Winston Dookeran - Lopinot / Bon Air West

Tuesday, 18 May 2010 00:00

Election 2010 Media Release 2010-05-18   If you ever wanted to hear a member of parliament defend the people, elect Rocky Garcia to be that man. Tonight as I stand here in the midst of all these candidates, I feel a sense of total satisfaction that the Congress of the People has now grown to the stage where we will walk into the parliament of Trinidad and Tobago next week Monday carrying the torch of your wishes, your desires and your hopes for years to come. My friends, it is symbolic that the president house roof collapsed. Because it is symbolic of the fact that Mr. Manning's government has collapsed and now we the people must get up and get a new government and put it into place. That is the symbolic nature of that event. And when I see what is happening when Mr. Manning is campaigning here and Mr. Rowley is campaigning there, and they are campaigning for the same government that one condemned and the other one denied the claims, I realize that these two men are shadow boxing in Trinidad and Tobago and its time they get into the real fight for government. And today I want to share with you just a little elaboration on one aspect of our manifesto pillars as we call them. Pillar number one, is that the People's Partnership will adopt what we call people-centred development. I want explain that to you and to all of Trinidad and Tobago. When we say that we want to adopt people-centred development , what does it mean to the people of Trinidad and Tobago? What will your new government do that is different to what is happening today? I will try to spend a few moments explaining the notion of a people-centred government. So let us decide who are the people we are talking about - And we are talking about the patients in our hospitals, we are talking about the students in our classrooms, we are talking about the farmers on our farms, we are talking about the vendors in our markets, we are talking about the landless in the society, we are talking about the children of our nation, we are talking about the senior citizens of this land of ours, we are talking about the young generation in Trinidad and Tobago, we are talking about the workers throughout this country, we are talking about the property owners, we are talking about the victims of crime, we are talking about the single mothers, we are talking about the environmentalists, we are talking about the public servants especially those who have retired many years ago, we are talking about civil society, and we are talking about the physically challenged. That is the people that we are talking about and we are saying now that the government will now be reorganized to serve the people. No longer will the government be allowed to serve the ego of the Prime Minister or the dream of the Prime Minister or the illusion of the Prime Minister. Government is about the people's interests, to serve the people. We will turn it around and put the people first in our government programmes. That is what we need. Now the next question you might ask and you are right to ask. How would we put the people first? What will we do so that the people will become the centre of development? Well let me start with the patients. Today our health system is organised not to serve the patients. When the patients go to the hospital, they are really almost of nuisance value. They have to wait. If they want an operation, they have to wait. The whole system is not geared to put the patient first. Sometimes the doctors feel that they are the bosses. Sometimes the administrators feel that they are the bosses. Sometimes the ministers feel that they are the bosses. But I want to tell you in putting the patients first, the patient shall be the bosses of the health care system. And that means that we will organize the system so that they become the first and primary object of the health care system. To do that calls for a complete reorganization of the mindset and of the philosophy. And it will take time, but we are changing the present system to put the patients first. Let us take the students. I received a report today from the education people in which they said that the biggest problem with the education system if you really want to tackle this is in the classrooms. And there are many problems in the classrooms. Recently when I visited a principal where they was some violence in the village. The principal told me things have changed. In the old days, when you expelled someone or suspended someone, he felt or she felt that that was something dishonorable. Today when you suspend the student, they are happy about it. So how do you discipline the student when they are happy with the suspension? So to introduce discipline we have to rethink the whole thing now. We need to establish how to keep the classroom psychology intact. And to do that we will reorganize the education system to put the focus on the students and the classroom. There is a lot to be done, but that is the direction in which we shall move. Let us look at the farmers. The farmers are producing a lot for our country but the farmers are suffering because of poor irrigation and flooding. So we will change the focus of expenditure in this country instead of putting up high buildings and mansions for the Prime Minister and blimps in the sky, we will take this money and use it for irrigation and for controlling flooding so that our farmers can earn a better living. That is what I mean by putting the farmers first. What do I mean by putting the vendors first? In our markets, our vendors provide food for us. They work very hard, sometimes coming there early in the morning. I was told in Macoya, they have to come the night before and wait till the market opens the next day to go inside. That kind of action we cannot tolerate. And we want hygienic conditions in the market, simple things. When you go into market they must have hygienic conditions. They must have proper water systems, toilets and so forth. And they must be treated like human beings. And it's not difficult to do. If we focus on having clean markets, hygienic markets. I'm not talking about new markets now, that will come later. I'm talking about changing that so the vendors can live in some kind of cleanliness and some kind of civilized fashion, because they are providing the food and we are treating them as if they don't belong. Then we talk about the landless in our society and there are many people who do not have land. But there are laws that govern the distribution of land and those laws allow such people to have access to land. We know how many applications there are. And we know there is a backlog of applications of people who are legally entitled to their tenure in the land. But they cannot get it because the administration does not put the landless first. They put the bureaucrats first and when you go they tell you come back tomorrow and come back tomorrow, until you get fed-up and you don't go back at all. And we are saying that we will regularize those who are within the law. Listen to me carefully all those within the current law, who are entitled to have their land tenure regularized, will be regularized in the new government. My friends, the children when I say putting the children first, what I mean is placing priority on the needs of the children. We have seen recently many of our children had to endure major health problems because of lack of funds. Recently, the Congress of the People supported such an individual and collected over a million dollars to send this child for an operation when the parents could not afford. Therefore we jumped in. But we are saying from now on, we will start a fund of 100 million dollars to be administered independently, for children who need medical care to save their lives. Then I come to our senior citizens. There are a lot of public servants who have retired. Maybe ten or fifteen or twenty years ago. The income they live on cannot keep them properly at this stage because cost of living has gone up. Even the old age pensioners are not getting more income. And I have found wherever I go in Tunapuna, as I walk; they are telling me that if you solve that problem for us, we will be happy. They are getting income based on 1960 and 1970 salaries and they are living in 2010. So I say we will have to regularize the whole pension system and in so doing we will try to agree on a minimum pension for everyone one so entitled of $3000.00 a month as a base income. Then my friends we talk about the young people - the youths, I see a lot of youths here. What does it mean to have a new government. It means that we will not leave you to fend for yourself. You have to go into small business and we will set up what we call a business incubator system where we take young people and train them how to start a business and how to make it successful. This has happened in India. I was there recently. I was taken to the Ministry of State Enterprises and they took me to a place they called the business incubator. And when I saw what was happening it blew my mind because they were taking young people and training them not in book alone but training them in the art of doing business. And they were training them from the beginning to the end, in everything - attitudes, financing, technology and accounting. And I asked them what the rate of success was. So that is why India is prospering today because they have forty such centres and they were only established six years ago. They are interested in developing their people. They are not interested in taking their people to give them handouts so that they can vote for them. Those days are over and we have come to tell you that here today. Those days are over now you will be put into creative activity and we will reorganize that programme. We have said it before - the GATE programme will be expanded contrary to what they are saying. We have said it also before that every secondary school student will have to be computer literate for the world ahead. For the new globalized world in which we live. And every student should be given a laptop to start his education so that by the time he is finished he is totally computer literate so that he can compete in the global world ahead of us. Those are the kinds of proposals we have for the young people. What do we have for the workers? We have said that the issue of safety and the issue of the minimum wage of workers in this country must be reviewed. We could not put a figure to that because we have to go and see what the arithmetic turns out to be. But to improve the well being of the workers especially the lower income workers is one of the priorities in putting the people first in people-centred development. What about the property owners? We are saying that we will remove, we will take away the proposal for imposing another tax on property owners in Trinidad and Tobago. And rather than that we will put a system of incentives that will allow the people of this country to become home owners by their own effort with the proper financing and with the proper opportunities. We will reorganize the entire mortgage industry because that Home Mortgage Bank was run by Calder Hart as you know and I have to say no more. The next one we will have to run it by some priest or other. So that's what I mean by putting the people first. Victims of crime - there are so many now and they have to fend for themselves after they have gone through their trauma or perhaps their parents or their children become the actual crime victims or been murdered. They do not have any care. In a modern society what you do you is provide psychological care to the victims of crime. And you provide opportunities for them to get over their trauma and you do it on an individual basis. And that is what I mean when I say we will set up a psychological support system. And fortunately for us we have in our midst here Anna Maria Mora one of the top psychologists in Trinidad & Tobago who has guided us in this direction already, because she is a member of a psychological team that has put forward a plan for the psychological needs of the country. I commend her totally to you here as the most fitting Member of Parliament for the Arouca/Maloney area, because she will bring that expertise. I have a lot to say now as we elaborate on the difference between the present government and your new government. Because if you don't know that you won't know what you're voting for. You might think you're voting to get rid of Manning. You have to get rid of Manning to get these things. And therefore that is why you're voting - to bring change to the country. Single mothers - we have gone through and looked at all the figures and we recognize that single mothers are having a hard time in this county for whatever reason. We want to encourage family life and we will have to have a special programme of support for single mothers. So that all the single mothers who through no fault of theirs or perhaps with some fault - I don't know, I am not on that scene of morality - I am on the scene of providing support for citizens of this country. When they are in distress, the government must come ad support them. Then we have the environmentalist. Those who like to see the environment clean. And they have to always protest, as we saw in Point Fortin and Cedros, where the environmentalist have been protesting when the Government was trying to impose and are still trying to impose Aluminum Smelters, at the risk of the resident's lives. Imagine they say that they will now allow the residents to have an annual check up, to see whether they have cancer or not. Imagine the government is telling the people they are going to deal with your risk by giving you an annual check up. The environmentalist will say no way. If this affects the health of the people, it must not be tolerated and that is our position. Our people are sacred. Our people are what government is for. And then we come to the issue of the physically challenged. And the physically challenged require a special kind of support. Not only with respect to the psychological support that I told someone like Maria Mora can offer, but also there is need to taking seriously the requirements of the physically challenged so that Town and Country Planning must insist that they have access to buildings, like ordinary human beings. Being physically challenged does not make them inferior. We want to treat them as equal citizens and when we do that then we have a civilized nation. So my friend these are only a few people-centre measures, all of which are included in this manifesto. We are making a contract with the people - a written contract. We cannot say one thing today and tomorrow do something else. And it is our responsibility to honour that contract and it is your responsibility to punish us if we do not honour that contract. So you are going to be part of the governing process from now on. You are not going to be simply sitting back and complaining and blaming. You will have the right of recall for any Member of Parliament who is not serving you. You will have many opportunities to participate through the establishment of a civil society board. It will be the responsibility of the people to get involved in the government and get involved in a systematic way. Now my friends no longer can we tolerate a government that was handed to us from 1960s by the colonial power. All that has happened in Trinidad and Tobago is that a group of Trinidadians and Tobagonians have come to capture that power, but it has remained a colonial government. We have to reject the colonial government that is in place in Trinidad and Tobago today and put in a people's government that will run our affairs. So my friends, I know rain is falling and time is short. But I want to tell you here today that you happen to have in your midst a young man who has come into the public arena at this significant stage in the political life of our country - a man who I believe adheres to all of the vision that I have expressed here today. And he has been a member of the education team of the Congress of the People. He is a well qualified man in the field of education in the United States. Since he came back to Trinidad he did not fall for the temptation to get a little job here and a little job there. He decided that he was going to come into the politics to change the system. He could have easily been teaching at a university today and only concerned about his life but he has decided to come into politics. And when people come into politics like that you have to show them that you are happy about that. Because all over the world, politicians are seen as honorable people. Politics is seen as a noble profession but the government here wants politicians to be seen as if they are wicked people as if they in fact crooks That is why they tell me that I cannot be a politician because I am not crooked enough. Imagine that! And I am putting the people of Trinidad and Tobago to the test, whether you want to remain with crooked politicians, or you want to start afresh now with a group of people to begin a'new the development of Trinidad and Tobago. That is what this election all about. That is what it means to each one of you. I am not giving this as promises, I am telling you what the new directions will be. And you'll have to work to make it happen. And obviously it will take some time. But direction is what we are offering to the country. We are not offering direction to just get rid of Manning. We are offering direction to build a new society. I want you to understand that. We are offering direction to build a new society and we are asking you to join with us in a People's Partnership to start this process. Once we start, there will be no place for people like Mr. Manning as Prime Minister. We will treat him well because every leader is a leader in the context of his times, and his time has come and gone and now we must move to new times. So my friends I want to support the candidacy of Dr Lincoln Douglas. A true child of the Congress of the People. His ideas influenced and were influenced by the Congress of the People. I believe Lincoln Douglas one day will become a leading politician in Trinidad and Tobago. I think his grounding is right; I think his intellect is superb; I think his commitment is without question; his loyalty to his people where he grew up cannot be questioned. So my friends the choice is yours. The choice is with the people of Lopinot and Bon Air West to decide whether they want that new beginning, whether they want to build that new society, or they want to surrender to a collapsed government who now have no ideas for the future and does not understand the requirements for modern democracy. And we are building a democracy on the basis of inclusion and they are proposing a democracy on the basis of exclusion. They exclude the people, and we say let us include the people and together let us run the country. So my friend think carefully, think hard, think about this defining moment in the history of this country. It is almost as if it is another 1990, when our democracy was under threat, and I had the opportunity to stand up in defense of the democracy of Trinidad and Tobago. Today I pledge with you, with my colleagues, around this table and all of the others, in the same way I defended democracy in 1990, I pledge to defend to our freedom in 2010. Thank you very much.

Last Updated on Thursday, 20 May 2010 09:10