I re­mem­ber not too long ago, pri­or to May 24, 2010, all the sup­port­ers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship were ful­ly sup­port­ive of the unions when they all locked arms protest­ing against the past re-gime. They were all against the prop­er­ty tax ini­tia­tive of the PNM, which was sup­posed to be a rev­enue-earn­ing ini­tia­tive.

The lead­ers of most of the trade unions be­came part of the coali­tion move­ment which even­tu­al­ly took over the reins of gov­er­nance. Every­one hugged each oth­er in a show of "love." The ex­pec­ta­tions were high and, based on the sort of promis­es made, the lives of cit­i­zens were sup­posed to im­prove, as "we would have risen" fol­low­ing the "change." It is now a full year and three months lat­er and the po­lit­i­cal yeast that was sup­posed to see the en­tire T&T and its cit­i­zens rise (oth­er than se­lec­tive in­di­vid­u­als, who may have ben­e­fit­ed from big mon­ey con­tracts, board ap­point­ments, re­ceiv­ing homes through pover­ty and very ques­tion­able "tem­po­rary ap­point­ments" at var­i­ous state agen­cies) is yet to even raise as much as an inch.

PSA pres­i­dent and man of an­tics, Wat­son Duke, shocked, duped, dis­ap­point­ed the peo­ple he rep­re­sent­ed by ac­cept­ing a five per cent wage in­crease, af­ter all the "fire, brim­stone" and fool­ish slo­gans he used in an ef­fort to con­vince or in­tim­i­date the CPO and Gov­ern­ment. Af­ter the first sig­nage he went ahead and signed four more times on the "dot­ted lines" and is now speak­ing a to­tal­ly dif­fer­ent lan­guage, sound­ing like a mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment in­stead. Cer­tain­ly, he dis­plays ab­solute­ly no con­cern about the dis­ap­point­ment and hurt the pub­lic ser­vants are now ex­pe­ri­enc­ing.

How­ev­er, the oth­er trade unions lead by An­cil Ro­get con­tin­ue to be de­fi­ant, mil­i­tant and bois­ter­ous­ly vo­cal (and right­ly so) about their re­fusal in ac­cept­ing a five per cent in­crease. In­ter­est­ing­ly, they are now un-der nu­mer­ous at­tacks by sup­port­ers of the PP, through let­ters to the news­pa­pers and talk shows on a dai­ly ba­sis. These hyp­ocrites were "in love" with these union lead­ers a year ago, when they dis­played their an­ti-PNM/Man­ning pro-tests. PP loy­al­ists were over­come with emo­tions and pas­sions as they smelt PNM blood, were un­able to see through the peo­ple who were promis­ing the "moon and stars." They were hear­ing all sorts of fool­ish rhetoric, but were not lis­ten­ing for the im­por­tant mes­sage that was not be­ing said. They were caught up "read­ing Aun­ty Kam­la's lips" and ad­mir­ing her charms.

They were hear­ing that every SEA stu­dent would re­ceive a lap­top, but they didn't hear that it was go­ing to be a chal­lenge to main­tain such a fool­ish and sense­less elec­tion pro­pos­al. This year stu­dents, I'm sure, are in high ex­pec­ta­tions of re­ceiv­ing their lap­tops. (Was there any promise this year?) These sup­port­ers were nev­er even aware that there was no men­tion of any rev­enue-earn­ing ini­tia­tives that would boost our econ­o­my. To­day, this coun­try is at a stand­still, there is ab­solute­ly no con­struc­tion boom, no al­ter­na­tives to the prop­er­ty tax and the smelter plant, ab­solute­ly no new ini­tia­tives to re­place those pro­posed by the PNM to earn rev­enues that may have sta­bilised our econ­o­my and cre­at­ed a bet­ter stan­dard of liv­ing for cit­i­zens.

It is for this rea­son that all right think­ing cit­i­zens of T&T should not ac­cept any ex­cus­es or any "sad sto­ries" about the coun­try "can­not af­ford" to do bet­ter than five per cent. This is to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able. Since they were ex­treme­ly des­per­ate to gov­ern this coun­try, then they should have known how easy it would have been. So to you PP sup­port­ers, stop be­ing ig­no­rant, leave the trade union­ists alone and ex­am­ine and se­ri­ous­ly ques­tion the peo­ple you gave all your heart and trust to. Re­mem­ber, many of you are a part of the work­ers who are be­ing rep­re­sent­ed and will stand to ben­e­fit af­ter all is said and done.

G Wal­ters

To­ba­go