On yet another occasion, Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar had to step in to clean up a mess which she had nothing to do with bringing about and her handling of it must be commended.I refer to the issue of the clearing of lands of crops planted by farmers. For the sake of clarity, because I think the message got lost somewhere in the issue and was buried under emotion and anger, the farmers were wrong.These were State lands and their occupation was unlawful.They received warnings which they apparently ignored and when faced with the consequence, used some level of manipulation to drag the public into the whole furore.
Yes, the knocks the farmers received from Jearlean John, Jack Warner and Roodal Moonilal should not have happened, but the Prime Minister's intervention managed to strike a balance between two very critical needs in T&T, ie, food and housing. Food will be given priority by the fast-tracking of allocations for unused, agricultural lands and housing will be given priority in the context of the apparent high level of need.And this begs the question: Couldn't this have been sorted out by the ministers themselves?Why the need to burden the Prime Minister and put her at the centre of a protest when, clearly, she has quite enough to do? At the end of the day, the issue appears to be settled and hopefully in moving forward the Prime Minister will not be forced to intervene unnecessarily in issues and perhaps end up taking heat again.
Randy Arjoon
Via e-mail