I read with great in­ter­est the ar­ti­cle ti­tled “Pen­ny slams mute lead­ers”, in which Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les ac­cused THA Chief Sec­re­tary, Far­ley Au­gus­tine of “mute lead­er­ship” while al­leg­ing that To­ba­go is be­ing mar­gin­alised un­der the cur­rent UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Un­der the present UNC-led gov­ern­ment, To­ba­go has re­ceived the largest al­lo­ca­tion in its his­to­ry, a record $3.72 bil­lion bud­get. That fact alone de­stroys the nar­ra­tive of mar­gin­al­i­sa­tion. More im­por­tant­ly, there has been a vis­i­ble im­prove­ment in col­lab­o­ra­tion and en­gage­ment be­tween the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment and the THA, demon­strat­ing a gen­uine com­mit­ment to part­ner­ship rather than po­lit­i­cal hos­til­i­ty. What ex­act­ly are To­bag­o­ni­ans be­ing de­nied, that re­quires strong ad­vo­ca­cy from the Chief Sec­re­tary? It is there­fore iron­ic that Ms Beck­les now des­per­ate­ly seeks to lec­ture the na­tion on “mute lead­er­ship”, when be­tween 2015 and 2025, she re­mained con­spic­u­ous­ly silent in the face of im­mense hard­ship suf­fered by cit­i­zens across T&T.

She was silent while thou­sands lost jobs fol­low­ing the clo­sure of ma­jor em­ploy­ment-gen­er­at­ing in­sti­tu­tions such as Petrotrin and Arcelor­Mit­tal. She was silent while crime spi­ralled to un­prece­dent­ed lev­els, while tax­a­tion in­creased re­lent­less­ly, while fu­el prices rose re­peat­ed­ly, and while in­fla­tion and the cost of liv­ing squeezed or­di­nary fam­i­lies. Even com­mu­ni­ties tra­di­tion­al­ly con­sid­ered PNM strong­holds ex­pe­ri­enced ne­glect, un­em­ploy­ment, de­te­ri­o­rat­ing in­fra­struc­ture, and so­cial de­cline, yet there was no bold moral out­rage as the na­tion is wit­ness­ing now as she at­tempts to pos­ture her­self as a de­fend­er of the peo­ple.

Her re­cent at­tack on the THA Chief Sec­re­tary al­so ap­pears to be a poor at­tempt at di­vert­ing pub­lic at­ten­tion away from her pro­cras­ti­na­tion in ad­dress­ing the res­ig­na­tion is­sue in­volv­ing Sen­a­tor Bates. The pub­lic is far more dis­cern­ing than the Op­po­si­tion leader be­lieves and will not be side­tracked by this tired and out­dat­ed po­lit­i­cal strat­e­gy so of­ten mas­tered and em­ployed by for­mer prime min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley when­ev­er the PNM found it­self un­der pres­sure.

Ms Beck­les al­so claimed that the PNM has cham­pi­oned To­ba­go’s au­ton­o­my for decades. A crit­i­cal analy­sis of this state­ment re­veals an ad­mit­tance of fail­ure on the part of the PNM, and al­so un­der­scores the na­ture of the PNM to ob­scure his­to­ry. The move­ment for To­ba­go au­ton­o­my gained na­tion­al promi­nence when the late ANR Robin­son pre­sent­ed his mo­tion in Par­lia­ment in 1970 ad­vo­cat­ing greater self-gov­er­nance for To­ba­go. Fol­low­ing that, the PNM had 16 con­sec­u­tive years in of­fice to put a strate­gic frame­work in place and failed. Post 1986, the late Man­ning had two sep­a­rate terms, fol­lowed by Dr Row­ley 2015-2025. To­ba­go was al­ways treat­ed as the bas­tard child of Trinidad un­der a PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion rather than equal sib­ling.

The PNM, hav­ing gov­erned this coun­try for the greater part of our post-Colo­nial his­to­ry, had every op­por­tu­ni­ty to es­tab­lish a com­pre­hen­sive and mean­ing­ful frame­work for To­ba­go self-gov­er­nance. They failed re­peat­ed­ly to do so. There­fore, Mrs Beck­les’ state­ment is less a boast and more an ad­mis­sion of decades of PNM fail­ure on the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my is­sue.

The truth is that the is­sue of “mute lead­er­ship” is not one on which Ms Beck­les pos­sess­es the moral au­thor­i­ty to pro­nounce. Like­wise, por­tray­ing the PNM as long-stand­ing cham­pi­ons of To­ba­go self-gov­er­nance can on­ly be de­scribed as ei­ther delu­sion­al or a des­per­ate at­tempt at po­lit­i­cal re­vi­sion­ism.

It will serve Ms Beck­les best to adopt her same past mut­ed lead­er­ship style and avoid the risk of fur­ther di­min­ish­ing her rep­u­ta­tion as a con­ve­nient leader.

L De Gannes, Ari­ma