Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh may well be on a po­lit­i­cal cam­paign. And Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er may well be right that the cur­rent route for the Point Fortin High­way may be the best op­tion avail­able to the Gov­ern­ment. But that does not take away from Kublal-singh's right, and that of the oth­er pro­test­ers, to try to change the Gov­ern­ment's de­ci­sion. That is a right they have in law and the opin­ion of a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter can­not take away their right.

Cit­i­zens protest against many de­ci­sions of the Gov­ern­ment, of­ten cre­at­ing chaos and may­hem in so do­ing. In many of those cas­es the Gov­ern­ment re­sponds to those de­ci­sions and cor­rec­tive mea­sures are tak­en. In fact, pub­lic and some­times vi­o­lent protest ap­pears to achieve much more than the more peace­ful protest of the High­way Re-Route Move­ment. Is the mes­sage that the Gov­ern­ment is send­ing to its cit­i­zens is that vi­o­lent protest is the means to change?

It must be ac­knowl­edged that progress will re­sult in dis­lo­ca­tion and in­con­ve­nience for some peo­ple and that in the past de­vel­op­ment has led to great trau­ma, the Pi­ar­co Air­port ex­pan­sion be­ing a re­cent ex­am­ple. But the right to ef­fect change, in­clud­ing by way of protest, is in­alien­able and must be af­ford­ed to all cit­i­zens with­out ex­cep­tion, even where their pur­pose may not be ac­cept­able to every­one.

Karan Ma­habirs­ingh

Cara­pichaima