On one bright and sun­ny day in Au­gust, 1962, the day be­fore Dr Er­ic Williams be­came T&T's first Prime Min­is­ter, the great man de­liv­ered what is per­haps the most stir­ring ad­dress by a po­lit­i­cal leader in T&T to date. He was ad­dress­ing a huge au­di­ence of school chil­dren and teach­ers at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah in Port-of-Spain when he said in part to the stu­dents:

"To your ten­der and lov­ing hands, the fu­ture of the na­tion is en­trust­ed. In your in­no­cent hearts, the pride of the na­tion is in­scribed. On your scholas­tic de­vel­op­ment, the sal­va­tion of the na­tion is de­pen­dent. "When you re­turn to your class­es af­ter in­de­pen­dence, re­mem­ber, there­fore, each and every one of you, that you car­ry the fu­ture of Trinidad and To­ba­go in your school bags." These pro­found­ly mo­ti­va­tion­al words were ut­tered to in­di­cate to the na­tion and its young peo­ple the im­por­tance of ed­u­ca­tion in a coun­try about to at­tain its in­de­pen­dence and at the same time sig­nalled to the pop­u­la­tion the role that young minds would be ex­pect­ed to play in the growth and de­vel­op­ment of T&T.

Since then, every suc­ceed­ing gov­ern­ment has paid due recog­ni­tion to ed­u­ca­tion as a ma­jor pil­lar for the ad­vance­ment of the peo­ple of T&T. There­fore, it was hoped that in the fur­ther­ance of this ob­jec­tive and with the sup­ply of com­put­ers to many of the coun­try's stu­dents, this ad­min­is­tra­tion would fol­low in the foot­steps of its pre­de­ces­sor gov­ern­ments by in­creas­ing ed­u­ca­tion­al fa­cil­i­ties and in­cen­tives to our young stu­dents. In­stead, I un­der­stand that the "book grants" that hith­er­to have been of im­mense as­sis­tance to chil­dren of poor and dis­ad­van­taged par­ents have been with­drawn.

The af­fect­ed par­ents were nev­er ad­vised that the sup­ply of com­put­ers would take the place of the book grants. In­stead, they are now con­front­ed with ad­di­tion­al elec­tric­i­ty bills to pow­er the com­put­ers, as well as the cost of text­books as pre­scribed by the Min­istry of Ed­u­ca­tion-costs that did not ex­ist pri­or to the in­tro­duc­tion of the com­put­ers. Un­sus­pect­ing par­ents fell for the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship man­i­festo promise of "com­put­ers for the chil­dren," not re­al­is­ing that there was to be a quid pro quo of com­put­ers in­stead of book grants. As a re­sult, sev­er­al poor and des­ti­tute par­ents are now be­ing sub­ject­ed to un­ex­pect­ed hard­ship by this un­car­ing ad­min­is­tra­tion, which has giv­en with one hand and has tak­en back with the oth­er. And this is the Gov­ern­ment that pro­fess­es to care so much about the chil­dren of the na­tion.

Par­ents are ask­ing if this UNC-led coali­tion se­cret­ly pro­pos­es to with­draw the School Feed­ing Pro­gramme that was al­so put in place by a PNM gov­ern­ment sev­er­al decades ago. The pop­u­la­tion has be­come very dis­trust­ful of this ad­min­is­tra­tion and many peo­ple have in­di­cat­ed that they will not be sur­prised at any­thing this Gov­ern­ment does. I find it par­tic­u­lar­ly iron­ic that at a time when the na­tion is cel­e­brat­ing the 100th birth­day of "The Fa­ther of the Na­tion," this Gov­ern­ment, by deny­ing poor peo­ple ac­cess to the "book grant," has elect­ed to dis­re­spect the mem­o­ry of the man who did most to eman­ci­pate Trinida­di­ans and To­bag­o­ni­ans from "men­tal slav­ery." We are cer­tain that the "book grant" is an ini­tia­tive that Wil-liams would have wel­comed and sup­port­ed, had he been alive to­day.

In a re­cent con­tri­bu­tion made by Ash­worth Jack in the cham­ber of the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly, he boast­ed that he was one of the lead­ers of the coun­try-hav­ing tak­en the TOP in­to an al­liance with the UNC more than a year ago, to try to wrest pow­er from the PNM. I wish to re­mind him that sev­er­al years ago, in a sim­i­lar sit­u­a­tion, dis­parate po­lit­i­cal par­ties with dif­fer­ing ide­olo­gies came to­geth­er to dis­place the PNM. Williams in­di­cat­ed cor­rect­ly then that the coali­tion would col­lapse. His daugh­ter, Er­i­ca Williams-Con­nell, in an ad­dress to a Bournes Road, St James, au­di­ence sev­er­al years ago, stat­ed:

"The PNM is in this for the long haul. We are not one of those fly-by-night mar­riages of con­ve­nience, one of these hasti­ly as­sem­bled groups call­ing them­selves po­lit­i­cal par­ties, dis­in­te­grat­ing en­tire­ly af­ter they lose their de­posits-or win their elec­tions. We are here to stay, as a force to con­tend with-win or lose, and stay we will."

I ap­pre­ci­ate that the UNC-led coali­tion is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly in con­trol of the for­tunes of the peo­ple of T&T and un­til it is con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly re­moved from of­fice at the polls, it has a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to gov­ern the coun­try ju­di­cious­ly. In the mean­time, how­ev­er, I ask Ash­worth Jack to ex­plain to the peo­ple of this coun­try why he, as one of the "lead­ers" of this "car­ing" Gov­ern­ment, and his UNC part­ners pulled the book grant, there­by plac­ing poor To­bag­on­ian and Trinida­di­an par­ents and chil­dren un­der un­nec­es­sary pres­sure.

Daniel Moses

Ma­son Hall