Gail Alexan­der

?T&T is in a state of emer­gency and the PNM Gov­ern­ment is pre­sid­ing over the forces of un­der­de­vel­op­ment, po­lit­i­cal leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple Win­ston Dook­er­an has said. Dook­er­an spoke at an NJAC fo­rum to which he had been in­vit­ed. Dook­er­an said he first met NJAC's Makan­dal Daa­ga at a 1969 meet­ing. He spoke about T&T's cur­rent sta­tus and how to pro­ceed in or­der to take T&T "out of this state of emer­gency." He said the is­sue of race in pol­i­tics to­day re­mained "the most im­por­tant can­cer that we must get rid of if we want to build a new T&T." He added: "The is­sue of re­turn­ing gov­er­nance to the peo­ple of this land and hav­ing our in­sti­tu­tions ac­count to our peo­ple and our na­tion is our pri­ma­ry re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to pro­tect our democ­ra­cy and our free­dom in our land."

"For al­most 20 years those who have been in charge of the lead­er­ship of this coun­try have ei­ther formed them­selves in­to ca­bals or car­tels in or­der to run against the peo­ple." How­ev­er, Dook­er­an said the forces of un­der­de­vel­op­ment were stronger than the forces of de­vel­op­ment. He added, "If you were to pre­side over the forces of un­der­de­vel­op­ment like the present Gov­ern­ment is do­ing, we the peo­ple must make the ver­dict clear that we have elect­ed you, not to pre­side over the forces of un­der­de­vel­op­ment but to pre­side over the forces of de­vel­op­ment." He said there was the be­lief that high growth rate and high build­ings were a sub­sti­tute for re­al de­vel­op­ment in T&T. "De­vel­op­ment can take place with­out high growth rates if it is based on fun­da­men­tal pre­cepts of gov­er­nance on one hand and on the re­quire­ment of our peo­ple to hold our gov­ern­ments ac­count­able. Where we all fail as a peo­ple, is be­cause to­day, we refuse to hold our gov­ern­ments ac­count­able for what they have done.

It is clear much work has to be done." Dook­er­an added. He said de­vel­op­ment could not be im­port­ed. He said: "It is not sim­ply a mat­ter of high build­ings, grandiose schemes, sat­is­fy­ing the whims and fan­cies of some­one who does not un­der­stand the dif­fer­ence be­tween de­vel­op­ment and ge­ol­o­gy."

"We need there­fore to go deep­er in­to our de­vel­op­ment chal­lenge but we now face a more dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion for the very re­silience of small economies like ours are be­ing put to the test." "Even there our gov­ern­ments have said, don't wor­ry be­cause the re­cov­ery is com­ing and we will be back to nor­mal...when we were go­ing down, they said don't wor­ry we are not go­ing down, and when we went down, they said don't wor­ry we will come back up. It is the act of a ge­ol­o­gist talk­ing about oil, not a leader talk­ing about de­vel­op­ing the na­tion," Dook­er­an said.