As the People's Partnership prepares to commemorate its first anniversary, one of its coalition partners, Labour Minister Errol McLeod admits that the past year has been challenging.Asked if he was satisfied with the way the PP had operated over the past year, he boldly said: "No.""It has not been all smooth and what we brought together on April 21 last year was really a number of different interests and it will take some time for those interests to gel," he said."I know that quite a lot of work has been done, but there remains quite a lot of work to be done. The question as to whether I am satisfied, I would say boldly, no," the former trade unionist said.
Speaking with the media after the opening of his party's first office at Bay Road Junction, Marabella, McLeod sought to qualify his answer."I am not satisfied now, neither have I been satisfied in the past when we had a lot of work to do," he said."However much we may have done, once there remains work to be done, then I am not satisfied we have done enough," he said."We have had our missteps, some people say, we have had our slippages, and clearly there have been some issues we have not been completely able to get our arms around.
"But I am an eternal optimists and believe that tomorrow the sun is going to shine brighter than it has shone before."Asked if he had any advice to offer Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar on leadership for the smooth running of the Government, McLeod said: "I think, first of all the MSJ must become that strong force that we are aiming to bring it to. "The MSJ has a measure of respect, some people might think, does not really equate with the MSJ size and its public posture, so we are fixing that part of it...We are confident that part of it is going to be fixed," he said.
"What happens in the other entities, we may not have any influence, but if we do the correct thing, then other people might also be influenced to do the correct thing."McLeod would not say whether the fact that the MSJ had just two official voices in the Government-he in the Parliament and vice-chairman David Abdulah in the Senate -placed them at a disadvantage."At the level of government, the MSJ does not have more than two voices, but I think those two voices are respected voices and they are impactful to the extent that numerical strength will make it impactful," he said.He said the MSJ was on the path to growth and serious development, "as we set about altering the power relationships in our society.
"MSJ is on the road to ensuring that the power relationships in our society are changed, so that we can have true peace equity and justice," McLeod said.He said while the MSJ was only a few months old, he believed the party would endure to the end.McLeod said now that the party had a place to call home, it would be a place of high activity, learning, where members would be "developing positions and the ability to articulate the issues that affect us all."He said the MSJ's headquarters would be a place "where we will learn to prioritise how we effect changes in the different sectors, in the different features of our operations, in the politics of the people, the people who count in Trinidad and Tobago."
