Clevon Raphael

In the next cou­ple of weeks the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship will be cel­e­brat­ing two years in of­fice and oh, what a tu­mul­tuous pe­ri­od it has been for the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar-led coali­tion gov­ern­ment. Against a very ear­ly death wish from its de­trac­tors and un­seem­ly con­tro­ver­sies brought on by some of the main play­ers in the ad­min­is­tra­tion, the PP has made it thus far and, un­for­tu­nate­ly, in spite of some no­table achieve­ments, to many peo­ple the Gov­ern­ment is be­ing thought about in terms of these self-in­flict­ed wounds.

Ask most peo­ple to name ten def­i­nite gains in­sti­tut­ed by the PP and many would be hard-pressed to say-but they would rat­tle off the neg­a­tives with­out the slight­est hes­i­ta­tion. And the regime has on­ly it­self to be blame, which, for one of the most open gov­ern­ments this coun­try has ever had, is most re­gret­table.

I say "most open" gov­ern­ment be­cause of the rel­a­tive ease with which re­porters can ac­cess min­is­ters-even the Prime Min­is­ter, who, like most of her Cab­i­net mem­bers, has not changed the tele­phone num­ber she had pri­or to as­sum­ing of­fice on May 24, 2010. Hith­er­to re­porters found it dif­fi­cult to treat with min­is­ters, in­clud­ing prime min­is­ters, ex­cept at for­mal news con­fer­ences and af­ter of­fi­cial func­tions.

It was so bad that one prime min­is­ter prompt­ly changed his tele­phone num­ber when a re­porter called him on his cell to check on a sto­ry. He an­gri­ly de­mand­ed from the scribe who gave him the num­ber and slammed down the phone on the jour­nal­ist. But one won­ders if this some­what un­prece­dent­ed open re­la­tion­ship be­tween this cur­rent crop of min­is­ters and mem­bers of the Fourth Es­tate is work­ing against the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Don't get me wrong; I am not for one mo­ment sug­gest­ing that the PM di­rects her min­is­ters to re­strict ac­cess to re­porters. Far from that. What I be­lieve is con­tribut­ing to the neg­a­tive per­cep­tions is that they are too anx­ious to talk to re­porters (you know most politi­cians are ad­dict­ed to a mi­cro- phone like duck is to wa­ter).

In this dis­pen­sa­tion some min­is­ters at times com­ment on mat­ters that do not fall un­der their port­fo­lio. And I sus­pect that the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment is tak­ing ad­van­tage of this "big-mouth" pen­chant and is ma­nip­u­lat­ing the na­tion­al de­bates on top­ics it would like to keep on the front burn­er.

This is called the pol­i­tics of dis­trac­tion-keep the min­is­ters talk­ing on is­sues which have ab­so- lute­ly no bear­ing on deal­ing with the re­al­i­ties af­fect­ing cit­i­zens, so that they would be spend­ing time re­ply­ing to ir­rel­e­vant mat­ters and lose sight of what they should be do­ing-serv­ing the peo­ple.

Most of these min­is­ters are fall-ing prey to this ap­par­ent PNM strat­e­gy, so that at the end of the term per­haps the PP would be hard-pressed to sell its achieve­ments in its re-elec­tion ef­fort. There is ab­solute­ly no need to al­ways re­spond to charges made by the PNM if one should ac­cept that the par­ty is con­stant­ly bait­ing the gov­ern­ment side.

It is al­so true that our po­lit­i­cal sys­tem is ad­ver­sar­i­al, and one can­not al­ways de­cline to re­spond to op­po­si­tion crit­i­cisms. But these must be ju­di­cious­ly se­lect­ed. It must not ap­pear that the PNM is set­ting the agen­da for the PP with the aim of dis­tract­ing the po­lit­i­cal di­rec­torate from ef­fec­tive­ly dis­charg­ing its min­is­te­r­i­al re­spon­si­bil­i­ties.

And the signs are al­ready there. One of them is what I con­sid­er a per­fect ex­am­ple of a mon­u­men­tal non-is­sue-the Mar­lene Coudray af­fair. While the trig­ger-hap­py ban­dits are tak­ing out in­no­cent cit­i­zens, big men and women en­gage in what was and still is to some ex­tent an ego fight among them­selves...one fam­i­ly.

What makes Prakash Ra­mad­har feel the PP must have the San Fer­nan­do may­oral of­fice in the COP camp? And if it is true there was a gen­tle­man's agree­ment that the COP would be giv­en that po­lit­i­cal plumb, why wasn't that agree­ment ho­n­oured?

The time spent on send­ing neg­a­tive sig­nals to the pop­u­la­tion once more was ex­treme­ly coun­ter­pro­duc­tive and served on­ly to send PP sup­port­ers, who gave the par­ty that over­whelm­ing vic­to­ry, in­to an­oth­er un­nec­es­sary and un­want­ed trau­mat­ic pe­ri­od.

I recog­nise that our present sys­tem of gov­ern­ment is some­what unique to T&T, which calls for a quan­tum shift in gov­ern­ing style, and be­cause of this views among the coali­tion prin­ci­pals would not al­ways be the same. But that is no rea­son why al­most every con­tentious mat­ter must be ven­ti­lat­ed in pub­lic, putting cit­i­zens-al­ready un­der stress from the ne­far­i­ous ac­tiv­i­ties of the crim­i­nal el­e­ment-through fur­ther men­tal tor­ture.