Richard Lord

Leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) David Ab­du­lah says the par­ty will re­main in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment for the time be­ing, de­spite its fail­ure to pro­vide good gov­er­nance. Ab­du­lah said so dur­ing yes­ter­day's MSJ news con­fer­ence at the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union Hall, Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain. "This is not a time for si­lence. Some­one must speak truth to pow­er and say to our col­leagues in the Gov­ern­ment: 'All is not well.' We must cor­rect the wrongs or run the risk of los­ing the con­fi­dence of the peo­ple," Ab­du­lah said. He said the MSJ had de­cid­ed to with­draw its mem­bers from all state boards, ex­cept tri­par­tite bod­ies. Ab­du­lah said two years af­ter the PP was elect­ed, com­mu­ni­ties still felt ne­glect­ed and "as a re­sult, the cyn­i­cism, dis­il­lu­sion­ment and , worse, anger, are ris­ing." He said since May 24, 2010, "all that has hap­pened is that faces have changed but nepo­tism, dis­crim­i­na­tion, pa­tron­age and cor­rup­tion are still the or­der of the day in too many (state) en­ter­pris­es." Ab­du­lah, a Gov­ern­ment sen­a­tor, added: "Though the part­ner­ship said on the cam­paign plat­form that no­body would lose their jobs, the sys­tem of con­tract em­ploy­ment through­out the pub­lic sec­tor has opened the door for the ter­mi­na­tion or re­new­al of con­tracts of work­ers, who are be­ing re­placed by deemed sup­port­ers of the Gov­ern­ment." Ab­du­lah said the PP had failed to ful­ly ob­serve the com­mit­ment not to politi­cise the state/pub­lic sec­tor. "This is not the change that peo­ple vot­ed for on May 24, 2010," Ab­du­lah in­sist­ed. He said in the ab­sence of con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form ,"it is in­cum­bent on the Gov­ern­ment to demon­strate it has the po­lit­i­cal will to ef­fect a change in the gov­er­nance cul­ture. That has not hap­pened." Ab­du­lah said the MSJ, at the week­end, de­cid­ed its leader and mem­bers would not at­tend Thurs­day's an­niver­sary ral­ly of the PP at Mid Cen­tre Mall, Ch­agua­nas. He said while the Gov­ern­ment had made im­prove­ments in the de­liv­ery of cer­tain ba­sic ser­vices, it had failed with re­spect to gov­er­nance. "It is the more cru­cial area of gov­er­nance that the part­ner­ship has not kept its com­mit­ments," he said.

Ab­du­lah said there have not been sig­nif­i­cant im­prove­ments based on the par­ty's ten-point list of con­cerns, which it out­lined in a state­ment on March 11:

• On­ly two of the out­stand­ing pub­lic/state sec­tor ne­go­ti­a­tions have been set­tled in the last two months.

Teach­ers, dai­ly paid work­ers, UWI, NIB and TTMF work­ers have seen no move­ment by the em­ploy­er in their ne­go­ti­a­tions;

• com­mu­ni­ties are still cry­ing out for a fair share of re­sources, as ev­i­denced by re­cent protests in east Port-of-Spain;

• while di­a­logue has start­ed on farm­ers' leas­es, farm­ers are be­ing threat­ened with re­moval to make way for a ju­di­cial cen­tre with­out pri­or con­sul­ta­tion and hous­es are of greater pri­or­i­ty than farms;

• there has been no at­tempt to ad­dress the odi­ous sys­tem of con­tract labour;

• Gov­ern­ment an­nounce­ment of no pri­vati­sa­tion at Trin­mar but si­lence on same is­sue at First Cit­i­zens;

• a draft fish­eries man­age­ment bill which has no pro­vi­sion for ban­ning trawl­ing in the Gulf and oth­er near-shore ar­eas;

• no progress in im­ple­ment­ing the cul­tur­al sec­tors agen­da; and

• no pol­i­cy po­si­tion has been an­nounced on the use of force by the po­lice against peace­ful protests by civ­il so­ci­ety

Ab­du­lah stressed: "It is our point of gov­er­nance that is the most trou­bling." He said he told the last meet­ing of PP lead­ers that "gov­er­nance was cen­tral to all of the MSJ's con­cerns." He said the PP's fail­ure to "live up to the Fyz­abad De­c­la­ra­tion and our man­i­festo com­mit­ments are tan­ta­mount to our break­ing the so­cial con­tract with the cit­i­zens." Asked to com­ment on a PP news­pa­per ad­ver­tise­ment, which lists Labour Min­is­ter Er­rol McLeod as one of the speak­ers at the ral­ly, Ab­du­lah said he was not aware the McLeod was go­ing to be speak­ing. "No­body will be speak­ing on be­half of the MSJ at that ral­ly," he said. Af­ter sus­tained ap­plause from the MSJ ex­ec­u­tive at the head ta­ble, Ab­du­lah said he was "sure that Com­rade McLeod, as a mem­ber of the MSJ, would con­cur with the po­si­tion of his par­ty and would not seek to speak on be­half of the par­ty ei­ther." In a state­ment last night from the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, act­ing PM Jack Warn­er re­spond­ed say­ing he had ob­served with some de­gree of dis­ap­point­ment Ab­du­lah's state­ment. "It is in­ter­est­ing to note that Sen­a­tor Ab­du­lah sought to with­draw his mem­bers from State Boards but stopped short of his own with­draw­al as a Sen­a­tor," Warn­er added. He in­sist­ed it was of "fur­ther in­ter­est that this ac­tion was tak­en just twen­ty four hours pri­or to the sched­uled re­turn of the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter to our coun­try." Warn­er said: "One would have imag­ined if not out of re­spect, then out of pru­dence, Sen­a­tor Ab­du­lah would have af­ford­ed the Prime Min­is­ter the op­por­tu­ni­ty to learn of his de­ci­sion and al­low for any dis­course with the lead­ers of the Part­ner­ship." He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was ap­praised of the mat­ter and has ad­vised that she will be deal­ing with all mat­ters sur­round­ing the MSJ's de­ci­sion up­on her re­turn.