Politics, we are told, has a morality of its own. Nowhere is this made clearer than with the present impasse between our Prime Minister and Dr Wayne Kublalsingh.
How is it that a government who supported his efforts to shut down the Couva smelter, when they were in opposition, can now label the very same ethical motivations of this environmentalist as "madness"? How is it that megalomania, pride and greed can be deemed acceptable in this administration when they were labelled as "evil" in the last? How is it that the very same firm hired for the fiasco called the Brian Lara Stadium under the last government can be awarded another contract by this government?
Party politics should have no role to play in this issue of the re-routing of a section of the proposed highway. It is clearly a moral issue. And those who quote the 1968 proposal must be living in a time-warp.
Allow me to loosely quote an EIA specialist:What do we support about the highway re-routing?
�2 the fact that it runs parallel to the Point Fortin highway and therefore may be one highway too many for the area. Filter roads are a cost-effective and viable alternative
�2 that it requires 2/3 of the budget to desecrate and cart a God-given mountain to a life-giving lagoon–both actions having significant environmental costs
�2 that alternative routes that do not cause people to lose the land they owned and lived on for generations have been proposed but are not considered, despite promises by the government to do so
�2 that the alternative of a route that costs 1/10 the proposed cost of filling and going through the lagoon is not being considered, despite the findings of 19 scientists hired by the present government at a cost of nearly $1,000,000 of taxpayers' money.
Finally, I ask those in power, why don't you support the proposed alternative? If you still have consciences, the answer would lie in the root of all evil, the almighty dollar, possibly already pocketed by your friends and family posing as contractors or intermediaries with the concomitant ten per cent "retainer" fee.Please, honourable PM, do not allow those close to you who have already demonstrated their arrogance, greed and petty biases, not to mention their loss of transparency, trust and truth, to force you into a corner where your natural compassion is being eroded.Give Dr Kublalsingh the hearing he deserves as a representative of all citizens with a conscience in this twin-island republic. Allow the qualities which convinced Trinbagonians that you were the right woman for the job to shine once more.
Lynda Banks-khan