|
Election 2010 Media Release
2010-05-19  This is such a wonderful welcome. I thank you so much the people of Marabella, the people of San Fernando. You made me imagine what I would read in the newspaper on Tuesday 25th May 2010. I took up the Guardian and there in bold headlines I saw: "The People's Partnership forms the new government of Trinidad and Tobago". And then I said let me verify that, so I picked up the Newsday, and I saw the headline "Kamla Persad-Bissessar: the next Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago". And then I said, something must be wrong, so I picked up the Express, and what was the headline? "Manning government collapses. Rowley and Manning fighting to be Opposition Leader".
It happens that they have already voted themselves out of office of Trinidad and Tobago. Listen to what Selwyn Ryan, that noted political scientist had to say, and you will bear with me because I think it is important for those who have not read it to hear what this honourable academic and political columnist said on 16th May, a few days ago: "This column has been the witness to at least ten general elections over the past 4 decades. In almost all of them, the exception being those in 1976 and 1986, I had supported the PNM whether implicitly or explicitly. We are now in 2010 and face many new and daunting political challenges and economic challenges. After having thought carefully about all that has happened to us as a people since 2007 and indeed before, and having also considered the issues and the options available to us in terms of leadership, I find that I cannot possibly support the PNM and I have no alternative but to endorse the People's Partnership coalition".
My friends, there is more to this article and I commend it to you, because when that happens, then you will know that the headlines I spoke to you have already been written. But there are still five days to go. And we must make no mistake and take no chances. And that is why you are here in your numbers in San Fernando, Marabella. And that is why our campaign teams, both in the People's Partnership and in the Congress of The People, have been working so effectively to bring the issues to the people so that they know what the choices are. I must commend Hulsie Bhaggan the chairman of the COP campaign committee for the work that she has been doing selflessly.
But as we bring the issues before you, they are attempting at the same time to establish the choice before us and the choice is very clear. The People's Partnership have brought different political ideas together, and on our platform here today we have one of such leaders who for all his years have been fighting for social justice among the people of our nation, Errol McLeod, he sits with us here today, and we have Makandal Daaga from Laventille who has been fighting for the true independence of Trinidad and Tobago, and Ashworth Jack who has been fighting my friends for Tobago's autonomy within a unitary state. And then you have our political leader of the People's Partnership, Kamla Persad-Bissessar who has opened the door to the possibilities that we have before us today, bringing the entire UNC support to work towards the People's Partnership and I commend the UNC support for so well anchoring the People's Partnership in Trinidad and Tobago today.
And then you have us, the Congress of the People, the newest political party in Trinidad and Tobago; the only party that was formed in the 21st century; the party that inspired the imagination of the people of this country and was able to secure - after one year - 148,000 votes in the last election; the party that claimed and brought a new dispensation to the politics, fighting for good governance.
So my friends, when you bring all these forces together, what do you have. You have the bringing together of the peoples of the country - the politics of inclusion, and on the other side, you have Mr. Manning who is now simply offering the politics of exclusion. That is why he says 'I shall win alone, I shall lose alone'. And my friends, I said for once he is right, this time around he is going to lose alone.
So we are about in Trinidad and Tobago to embrace the politics of inclusion. I just came from a meeting in Tunapuna - which people said was a PNM area. When I made the decision to fight in Tunapuna, some people told me "What madness, you're leaving a safe seat to go in a marginal seat?" So I said I don't understand that question, for me Winston Dookeran as far as I am concerned, every seat is safe for me in Trinidad and Tobago, and so are the members of the People's Partnership because we have banished once and for all the divisions on the basis of race, as we come together now as one people, with one vision, and one goal. That will be the lesson of the 2010 election when it's all over. And when it's all over, we have a lot of work to do as we well know.
If I can spare a few moments of your precious time, I have already begun to do my work in Tunapuna. While I am campaigning, and every day and night we are campaigning all over Tunapuna. I have been very quietly setting up a Tunapuna Partnership Council where I have brought people from every community in Tunapuna into what I call a Tunapuna Partnership Council. Because I know and I sense that representation was the issue. The disconnect between the government and the PNM was the issue. And the people were longing to become part of the new government, they were longing for good representation, so my friends, I am pleased to tell you that tomorrow at one o'clock, as the prospective Member of Parliament for Tunapuna, I shall be launching the Tunapuna Partnership Council in a public situation.
I just told you that I have already rolled up my sleeves and I am ready to work again for the freedom of Trinidad and Tobago. But we are very near to the market, and the market here is no different to the market in Tunapuna. And when I visited, that market recently, because that is where I normally do my own shopping, or my wife does it with me, when we go into that market, the biggest thing is the hygienic conditions in the market. A simple thing. No running water. People have to buy and sell food, which is about our health, and there is no running water, as indeed there is in all the markets. I went with Reeka to the market in Barrackpore some time ago, and I am telling you that what has emerged in my mind, if in 2010 with oil rich Trinidad and Tobago, with so many high buildings and the things up in the air, we cannot have a clean market in Trinidad and Tobago, where there should be hygienic conditions, and I say for that and that alone, you deserve to get a new government in Trinidad and Tobago.
We cannot subject our vendors to that kind of living, but that represents the changing priorities of your new government. The old government which we succeeded has been concerned about the symbols of development, so they walk through the streets and they say this place is looking like New York, and that is development. My friends, that is only the symbols of development, that is what the eye can see, but what the heart can feel is different and what the heart can feel is the suffering of a people, the unhygienic conditions in our market, the poverty in our land, our unwed and single mothers. And that is what it is, development my friends is not about the symbols, it is about the substance, which is about the people themselves and that is why we will change our priorities to spend the money on the people's needs as the first claim.
So my friends, this is a choice, not about Manning alone, this is a choice about a new way of governing. And in this respect I want to tell all the members of the PNM who still continue to support them, and particularly those who have doubts, and there are many, that the People's Partnership will only be complete when the members of the PNM join with us to build a unified country and reject Mr. Manning at this stage. And I invite them to look at the country first, look at the future of the children first; don't allow themselves to be duped by the illusions of a Prime Minister who everyone says can only govern with a prophetess around him. So my friends, we cannot in 2020 have a Prime Minister who admits that he needs a prophetess to govern. He may wish to have a prophetess for his private life but when he subjects our future to that prophetess, I say that is hell we cannot go into, we the people must govern ourselves and put people who can govern with a sense of science and governance before them.
I heard him say in his television interview that Calder Hart was just cutting corners. He doesn't understand the fuss, he is paying the price for being a PNM supporter, and all he was doing was cutting corners. Well I say to you today let us all cut corners and get rid of Mr. Manning as soon as we can, each one of you must now become a canvasser in your own right. If he is saying Mr. Calder Hart is cutting corners, we shall now cut corners to become the next government of this country.
And to do that we have a lot of work to do, to get there and then after. But today I am so privileged to be here on this platform with two women of the People's Partnership. You heard Carol Cuffy-Dowlat. If there is a people's person in this country, it is Carol Cuffy-Dowlat, the member of the borough council herself, who has overcome many obstacles to serve this nation and when many were fearing to walk the road, she took up the challenge strongly to get into the lion's den and fight Mr. Manning himself and for that we salute her and work with her, for the victory ahead. That will be a historic one. That will be even more historical and symbolic than the falling down of the roof in the president's house, which simply symbolizes the collapse of the PNM government.
And then, we have to deal with our future and our future is linked to our economy, and our energy sector, and there is one person on this platform who has been speaking for the last 3 years and more, trying to put sense in energy public policy in this country. That person exposed the risk of the declining revenues in the energy sector long before the financial crisis came on us. In her clinical analysis and knowledge of that sector, she was able to show the way forward. At the same time she explained to this nation what is ahead of us by having our gas reserves and gas supplies limited, but we were engaged in an industrialization policy only linked to gas.
Tonight I heard her talk about whether those deals should be subject to transparency tests and I always heard Errol McLeod saying that one of the things that he wants and it is part of our manifesto is that we shall have a forensic audit on Petrotrin. My friends let us get on with the job.
But this candidate of yours has also proposed something that you probably have not seen. She has proposed the dynamics of setting up a diversification fund using the financial resources of the energy sector to create development in the non-energy sector. Serious issues, issues that relate to your future, the country, its economy and its people. And I was so proud to sit here and here your candidate for San Fernando West,who I think has had all the credentials today to become one of our leading spokespersons on energy, and our official gratitude goes to Carolyn Seepersad-Bachan for the work she has been doing for this party and country.
What she is saying - as an economist I try to interpret what she is saying - but she is way above my whole understanding of energy. Let us align finance with development and let me explain that. We have $50 billion in our national treasury. Today, we are borrowing money right, left and center. A few years ago the debt of this country was about 30% of the total output. Today it is getting near the threshold point of 50%. Our foreign reserves are not increasing and while they remain at a healthy position, the rate of growth has falling. And that is what she meant when she says that the declining revenue in the energy sector has never noted.
Today our competitiveness in our economy is going down. So when we look to the future, how will we market our goods in Latin America, in Brazil or even in CARICOM. Our competitiveness is going down.
While we look at our fiscal account, we see now that there is a growing deficit, and we don't know it yet. I was told today that in the Mount Hope complex, they are running a deficit of $4 million a year. I will try to verify that.
So what we have to do is to realign our finances to development. And by that I mean, we will have to channel our finances to creating development in the country, not using our finances to create all these things that Mr. Manning is saying and doing because he has lost sight. He doesn't really understand development and I know when I listen to him that what he is saying about development I used to know one time, but I've already forgotten that because he is still in the school of the 1970s and we are in the year 2010 and we've got to understand what the world ahead of us is all about, what global opportunities are available, what is happening.
But my friends, he is imposing a kind of industrialization policy that one of your constituents here told me is unbridled industrialization resulting in financial terrorism. You probably know who it is because they are so many good writers in San Fernando. But that is how people have described it. So what we have to do is to align our finances to development and we've got to ensure that we create the necessary funds to create the development onshore. And I told my friends in Tunapuna today when they asked me the question of a property tax, I said we have it in our manifesto, that we will abolish the proposal for increasing the property tax in Trinidad and Tobago.
But I said further, we will then reorganize the financing of housing, so that we can have greater access to housing by the people of this country who will now have the financing and the capability to own their own homes and the young people in particular do not have that opportunity, and we must have creative financing schemes of the modern times to encourage that. Financial engineering from abroad will now be brought into our financial sector. And that is how we will deal with housing, instead of taxing the property owners we will provide opportunities for home ownership by the population and particularly the under-classed and the underprivileged.
We said we will direct our attention to the landless, because now they are one hundred plus people who are entitled to the tenure in the land according to the current law, but they are not given that tenure. When I went to Caura this morning and I met the farmers, and that is what they asked me. What about our tenure? We are in the food basket of Trinidad and Tobago. I don't know how many of you have been to Caura but it is the most beautiful place to be, and I am so happy to be the Member of Parliament who will incorporate Caura in the future. But the farmers were asking me, What about land tenure? And I remembered our proposal that we will set up an independent body to regularize all people who are entitled to proper land tenure, whether they be farmers or households, and it is all over the country. What is happening in Tunapuna is also happening all over the country. And that is very simple. It doesn't require a cent to do it. It requires a determination and a reorganization of the land registry process.
But we said more than that, in our manifesto you will see it. We will not put this in the hands of the public servants alone, we will put it in the hands of an independent authority who can act fairly and squarely with equal treatment for all and will not treat it as though it is something they are giving to the people. So I'm telling you these things my friends here in Marabella if only to tell you that what you are voting for is not only to remove Manning. That is the simplest part of our job. Getting the job done thereafter is when we will have to engage you and others to make it happen.
So I am not here to bury Manning. That is something he has done for himself. I am here to engage the people in Trinidad and Tobago as I've been doing to come together in this new formation which is but the beginning of the new politics of Trinidad and Tobago. Remember when I used to talk about new politics and people didn't know what I was saying. I knew it would take them some time to know it, but I know now they know it and they are going to vote for the new politics of the next few years that will shape our country. And that is why I can stand on a platform here as I did in Tunapuna tonight and tell the PNM supporters - my meeting took place next to the PNM branch office - and I told them, come with us, because I had no fear because what I am saying is as good for them as for us, and it is as good for Trinidad and Tobago and for our children in the future and it is good for the society.
That is the platform on which we are, and therefore we have changed the politics. But they don't understand that. They are still in the old paradigm of politics, in attacking one and attacking the other, and how you dress, and all sorts of other things. That's good for picong, but they substitute picong for real issues. So my friends, what we are facing is a change in governance consistent with the 21st century demands on a small economy that is about to take its place.
If we fail to make that choice, we will be collectively accepting that we prefer bad governance, to the prospect of good governance, because in every indicator of public life, the government has had bad governance, whether it be in crime, I'm sure you heard Vernon De Lima earlier, I missed it but I know his thoughts, on the issue of crime and corruption, healthcare, water and irrigation to our farmers, on the issue of supporting the under-classed in our society that have had to struggle for a living, the rural poor and the urban dispossessed.
We need a new development approach to Trinidad and Tobago. Mr. Manning is going to take us all down the road with him, and I am not going to go with him, and you are not going to go with him, and Trinidad and Tobago is not going to go with him anymore. We got to stand up as one people, and say we are going on a different path, you have already had two and a half terms in office, and that is enough for you. Let us now change course, change direction, change the future, and let us stand up strong as members of the People's Partnership and to my COP supporters, I may not get the chance to tell you this again in San Fernando, thank you, thank you for making this a possibility. Good night, my friends. |
