Clevon Raphael

If through some unimag­in­able rea­son this gov­ern­ment should cave in to the non­sen­si­cal de­mands of the so-called Re-Route Move­ment led by pub­lic­i­ty hound Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh, I would be the first per­son to pick up a plac­ard and stage a one-man protest call­ing for the res­ig­na­tion of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment.

Dear read­ers, this stance of mine is in­dica­tive of how strong­ly I am against this piece of tom­fool­ery be­ing in­dulged in by the part-time UWI lec­tur­er un­der the guise of a hunger strike against the con­tin­u­a­tion of the San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin high­way un­til cer­tain promis­es are met by the Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar PP regime.

He is be­ing ably as­sist­ed by frus­trat­ed politi­cians main­ly of the op­po­si­tion ilk who have sworn that they would work to­wards bring­ing down her ad­min­is­tra­tion be­fore the con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due time for an­oth­er gen­er­al elec­tion in 2015.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly, two mem­bers of the Cab­i­net have joined the cho­rus in call­ing for the re­lease of a tech­ni­cal re­port which has been passed on to the group and which can be ob­tained by any mem­ber of the pub­lic through the Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion leg­is­la­tion, ac­cord­ing to gov­ern­ment spokes­men.

I have no prob­lem with the loy­al op­po­si­tion at­tempt­ing to bring down any gov­ern­ment through our de­mo­c­ra­t­ic sys­tems un­der which we are hap­pi­ly gov­erned, but when this is be­ing done by these politi­cians tak­ing cit­i­zens for a bunch of sim­ple­tons, that is where I draw the line.

It is not my in­ten­tion to re­gur­gi­tate all the ma­te­r­i­al facts in this sor­did mat­ter ex­cept to touch on the main is­sue here which is at the source of the farce-re-rout­ing of the high­way which would by­pass at least five ma­jor com­mu­ni­ties now in­clud­ed in the bil­lion-dol­lar project.

Kublals­ingh is call­ing for the Prime Min­is­ter to keep her promis­es to the group and pro­duce some kind of tech­ni­cal re­port, both of which Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has painstak­ing­ly point­ed out were, in fact, un­der­tak­en. She did so at a pub­lic meet­ing in her con­stituen­cy ear­li­er this week where she pro­duced the ev­i­dence to sup­port her state­ment.

In re­call­ing that the project was in­deed put on hold as de­mand­ed by the en­vi­ron­men­tal ac­tivists, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told a meet­ing of jour­nal­ists last week Thurs­day: "In sus­pend­ing the road­way to fa­cil­i­tate dis­cus­sions and reach com­pro­mis­es the state had to bear the bur­den of the costs but I did so to reach the very com­pro­mis­es of­fered by the tech­ni­cal team, but they were all to no avail."

To give in to an­oth­er re­quest to put the project on hold would, of course, in­cur fur­ther fi­nan­cial bur­den on the state (read the peo­ple) where those funds could go to­ward pro­vid­ing much-need­ed fa­cil­i­ties and ameni­ties es­pe­cial­ly in rur­al ar­eas. Kublals­ingh keeps re­peat­ing that the Prime Min­is­ter was not keep­ing her promis­es but if I had to choose be­tween two of them I have no hes­i­ta­tion in giv­ing the ben­e­fit of any doubt to Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

At the end of the day the peo­ple, be­cause of the very free and ag­gres­sive news me­dia in Trinidad and To­ba­go, would de­ter­mine whether the PP gov­ern­ment was not up-front with us and they would pay the po­lit­i­cal price. Just as they dealt with the PNM.

If I had any sym­pa­thy for Kublals­ingh or his cause, that went out the win­dow the mo­ment he hurled pro­fan­i­ties at Health Min­is­ter Dr Fuad Khan, who, on the in­struc­tions of the same Prime Min­is­ter he is try­ing to em­bar­rass, went to en­sure his health was not be­ing threat­ened.

If he could be so dis­re­spect­ful to any­one, in this in­stance a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter on a com­pas­sion­ate mis­sion, and in the pres­ence of the me­dia, why should I re­spect any­thing he has to say in this dis­gust­ing farce? Dai­ly his lan­guage, par­tic­u­lar­ly when re­fer­ring to Per­sad-Bisses­sar and gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials, is sound­ing more ven­omous and vit­ri­olic as if they are forc­ing him to starve (?) him­self in full glare of the me­dia.

Is that the ac­tion of a man who is re­al­ly fight­ing for a na­tion­al cause or is it of some­one bent on set­tling scores of what­ev­er na­ture and with whomev­er? The bot­tom line is, if Kublals­ingh's health should suf­fer per­ma­nent dam­age he has on­ly him­self, his fam­i­ly, his band of po­lit­i­cal­ly-in­spired "sym­pa­this­ers" who per­haps are se­cret­ly hop­ing for the worst so that they could with croc­o­dile tears blame the gov­ern­ment, to blame.

If I were his broth­er, or a son, even his moth­er, I would, de­spite his protes­ta­tions, drag his back­side off the road and tell him to stop play­ing the fool. In the mean­time Dr Kublals­ingh would be bet­ter off run­ning a weight-loss pro­gramme in­stead of tak­ing "bas­ket" from a bunch of po­lit­i­cal losers and oth­ers who epit­o­mise the max­im: mis­ery likes com­pa­ny.