The tyre is a badge of shame for holders of public office who misbehave in public office. It is part of our advocacy for social, economic, financial and ecological justice.Consider the Buddhist monks who set themselves ablaze, with tyres, out of sheer desperation at the injustice of the Vietnam War. Consider the amount of tyres ordinary citizens have burnt on our roads historically, out of sheer desperation about the failure of governments to act. The tyre is a symbol of ordinary people's feelings of desperation.
The Prime Minister deserves the tyre.Did the Prime Minister abide by her promise to put Debe to Mon Desir on hold, a promise she made to the HRM in August 2012 when she met with them?No.She either directed, colluded with, or omitted to stop Minister Jack Warner and the Major General of the Defence Force from smashing the Reroute camp in June 2012; a camp which Namdevco had given permission for.Did she obey her promise to do a review of Debe to Mon Desir?
No. She did a sham 15-page rehash of old positions of the Ministry of Works and Nidco, supervised by Minister Warner.
When a hunger strike started in Fyzabad in November 2012, and continued in front of the Prime Minister's office, reminding the PM to abide by her promise for a review, how did she react? She and her officers went on a Monday Night Forum campaign denigrating the strike; making allegations calculated to demoralise and trivialise.
Did not the Prime Minister and her officers agree to set up the Armstrong team to examine Debe to Mon Desir? Did the Government not fully participate in the review process? When asked whether she would abide by the report, she replied she did not know. She had to consult. She got up and angrily abandoned the meeting with HRM members.
For 50 days members of the HRM sat in front of her office with large posters, including: "Abide by the Armstrong Report." Did the Prime Minister respond? No.Bulldozing operations started at Debe to Mon Desir, South of the M2 Ring Road, in late January 2014, with the court matter still in progress.Three times Justice James Aboud was asked by lawyers representing the Prime Minister's Attorney General to recuse himself. He refused, the last time handing down a judgement ordering the State to pay costs.
Now the State has appealed.Is this not a calculated attempt by the State to delay in order to start, accelerate and manufacture grounds to, in future, justify Debe to Mon Desir? Is this not a waste of taxpayers money and an abuse of the court?
How many actions have the HRM conducted, peaceably and with dignity, to be confronted with the false, the abusive, the meandering, the violent? Hundreds of letters; sit-ins; marches; the advocacy camp in Debe; meetings with public officials; court sessions; motorcades, jerseys, pamphlets and fund-raisers; arrests and draggings by police and soldiers.
Why should not a people defend themselves against a savage economic attack on their fortunes? An attack on their 300 homes, the severing and fragmentation of 13 communities, the alienation of thousands of acres of agricultural lands, the destruction of multi-billion dollar businesses, a viable street and road network, the future viability of the Oropouche Lagoon, an economic commons, a sanctuary to flora and flaura, and a water and soil reserve?
The tyre is not garbage. It is a symbol of peaceful resistance, an insult to abusive power. It is a resource. It is a tool in the advocacy for peaceful revolution.
Our nation demands revolution; in health, education, the economy, security, finance, agriculture, governance. If we do not make a revolution using peaceful, albeit radical and creative gestures, we will get it through violent gestures. Imagine if all the officers who hold public office were to get a tyre of shame when they misconducted themselves, either at their gates or in symbols in their e-mails and mails?
Wayne Kublalsingh
Highway Reroute Movement