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Sunday, July 6, 2025

'PP facing midterm unpopularity'

by

20130908

In the three-and-a-half years of its five-year term no con­crete ev­i­dence has been tak­en to the po­lice or the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions (DPP) on al­le­ga­tions of cor­rup­tion against any mem­ber of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment.So de­clares Hous­ing Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal in de­fend­ing a claim by PP de­trac­tors that this is the most cor­rupt gov­ern­ment in the his­to­ry of T&T. He claims the regime is in the midst of its midterm un­pop­u­lar­i­ty syn­drome.

Mooni­lal is al­so tak­ing is­sue with the leader of the In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty, for­mer na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ter Jack Warn­er.

Q: Dr Mooni­lal, the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion is fac­ing its dark­est hour at this time....right or wrong?

A: (Quick­ly re­flect­ing on the ques­tion) Wrong.

What ar­gu­ment do you pro­pose to counter that propo­si­tion?

(Seat­ed in the porch of a house at the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion es­tate in Debe, south Trinidad, ear­ly Wednes­day morn­ing) The Gov­ern­ment is in midterm and at this time all gov­ern­ments have chal­lenges deal­ing with peo­ple's in­ter­est is­sues.And as you set­tle down in of­fice there are dif­fer­ent groups which will be de­mand­ing var­i­ous goods and ser­vices which not all would get. Gov­ern­ments do face un­pop­u­lar­i­ty at this time, but this is cer­tain­ly not a dark hour as such.

Even though the regime is in midterm syn­drome, there is al­so a con­stant stream of crit­i­cisms against the Gov­ern­ment–the re­cent event in Ch­agua­nas West and the spec­tre of Jack Warn­er's ILP.

One of the chal­lenges the Gov­ern­ment has faced, prob­a­bly from day one, is the mar­ket­ing of its achieve­ments. I think the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty is not ad­e­quate­ly aware of these achieve­ments.

How could this be so when the tech­nol­o­gy is there and eas­i­ly ac­cessed?

Ok. It is a prob­lem of cul­ture in that many min­is­ters, in­clud­ing my­self some­times, you know, we are so busy work­ing that we don't stop to pro­mote those pos­i­tives...

Cul­tur­al?

Yes, in that not all of us are ea­ger to be in the me­dia be­cause we have a lot of work to do. It is al­so a prob­lem of com­mu­ni­cat­ing, and when we en­tered of­fice sev­er­al of our de­trac­tors were claim­ing we were ar­gu­ing and show­ing off about our good work. Be­cause of that we went in­to a lull, stopped boast­ing and did not suf­fi­cient­ly high­light our work.

Any ex­am­ples of this fall­out cre­at­ed by ceas­ing to blow your trum­pets?

Yes. For ex­am­ple (an an­i­mat­ed sweep of his hands over the hous­ing set­tle­ment), in this area you are see­ing hous­es be­ing con­struct­ed, heavy con­struc­tion ma­chin­ery, a new high­way, the south­ern cam­pus of the UWI tak­ing shape....

Wait, wait. Is this the rea­son why you de­cid­ed to do this in­ter­view in your con­stituen­cy...to boast about some of your achieve­ments?

No. I brought you way down here so that you can get away from the hus­tle of city life. Look, I am sure you are en­joy­ing the sooth­ing breeze at this time of the day. (A broad smile).And I am high­light­ing achieve­ments be­cause it is on­ly now cit­i­zens as a whole are see­ing our achieve­ments...

I do hope you are not see­ing this as any PR thing?

Of course not. But a lot is be­ing done. In my min­istry alone, Clevon, when you think of it, two hos­pi­tals we are build­ing: a chil­dren's hos­pi­tal and Chancery Lane in San Fer­nan­do. Which gov­ern­ment has built two such in­sti­tu­tions in just five years?

The chil­dren's hos­pi­tal...isn't there some kind of du­pli­ca­tion be­cause of the Wendy Fitzwilliam Chil­dren's Hos­pi­tal at Mt Hope?

The fa­cil­i­ty be­ing built in cen­tral Trinidad is a much more com­pre­hen­sive hos­pi­tal in that adults would al­so be ac­com­mo­dat­ed.Then we have the Ma­yaro fire sta­tion, which was promised since 1965 by the coun­try's first prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams, now be­ing built.

Ok, Mr Min­is­ter, please do not go off on a cam­paign tan­gen­tor lec­ture.

Ok, I take note of your cau­tion (A heavy chuck­le). But I was mere­ly in­form­ing you of the achieve­ments which we were not talk­ing enough about. But you could have your way.

Ok. Cor­rup­tion. There is this nag­ging ac­cu­sa­tion from some of your de­trac­tors that this Gov­ern­ment is the most cor­rupt in the coun­try's his­to­ry.

(Scoop­ing up a piece of sa­da with baigan and toma­to cho­ka, part of his break­fast menu, with his fin­gers) Clevon, I find that to be a very, very strange and ter­ri­ble con­clu­sion, be­cause in the three years that we have been in of­fice not one mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment, not one, has been ar­rest­ed or charged, not one piece of ev­i­dence ten­dered to the po­lice or the DPP to sug­gest cor­rupt acts.

So then what's re­spon­si­ble for this re­peat­ed ac­cu­sa­tion?

What has hap­pened, Clevon, is that the so­ci­ety has be­come more cor­rup­tion-sen­si­tive and this is so be­cause of the ad­vent of wide­spread mass me­dia, and once you have ex­pan­sion in eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ties you spend more mon­ey and once you do that there is more con­cern for trans­paren­cy.

So in a strange way it is the eco­nom­ic growth that al­so gen­er­ates cor­rup­tion al­le­ga­tions. Peo­ple talk a lot about cor­rup­tion but ask any­body to bring the ev­i­dence. In fact the green man is do­ing just that...who used to be a mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment.

Dr Mooni­lal, how could you re­fer to the ho­n­ourable Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Ch­agua­nas West as the "green man"?

The leader of the... for­mer min­is­ter of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty...who is now talk­ing cor­rup­tion came be­fore me and oth­ers, the UNC's screen­ing com­mit­tee, and asked to rep­re­sent our par­ty in the Ch­agua­nas West by-elec­tion.He is now talk­ing about how many min­is­ters built hous­es, who buy cars, who have this, who have that...no ev­i­dence.

Dr Mooni­lal, can you per­son­al­ly vouch for the clean hands of your fel­low Cab­i­net col­leagues?

Sure­ly, Clevon, of course I am not in every min­istry in the coun­try, I am not in their hands. I work in my min­istry and you can­not vouch. But what I can say is that the way I look at it is that the Gov­ern­ment has per­formed at a lev­el of trans­paren­cy and ac­count­abil­i­ty that is un­par­al­leled.

Ude­cott, which en­joyed not a very pleas­ant track run un­der the for­mer PNM ad­min­is­tra­tions–what's hap­pen­ing there?

Ok. Knock wood (tap­ping his ta­ble with two knuck­les). Un­der the last ad­min­is­tra­tion, if you look­ing for bobol, cor­rup­tion you looked to Ude­cott. To­day, when was the last time you heard any un­to­ward de­vel­op­ments there?To­day, Ude­cott is build­ing nine po­lice sta­tions, two fire sta­tions, two hos­pi­tals, so that it is work­ing. The HDC...it was a place where the for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning asked the present Leader of the Op­po­si­tion, where did the mon­ey go?

Three-and-a-half years in­to our term, the Prime Min­is­ter nev­er had to ask me or any­body in the HDC where the mon­ey gone, be­cause we see where the mon­ey gone.

Chang­ing gear. If the PP should lose the Oc­to­ber lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion, would that sig­ni­fy that the Gov­ern­ment is now on its back foot?

(Hands clasp­ing the back of his neck as he re­lax­es at the end of his break­fast). Well, we do not con­tem­plate an elec­toral de­feat, be­cause we are very pos­i­tive go­ing in­to the elec­tions to win, based on the work we have done.We are a po­lit­i­cal par­ty and we are al­ways pos­i­tive. And in choos­ing can­di­dates we are al­ways mind­ful of choos­ing the best can­di­dates pos­si­ble. Peo­ple who can iden­ti­fy with their own com­mu­ni­ty, vil­lage or town.

Based on the out­come of the CW by-elec­tion, is it a fact that gov­ern­ment min­is­ters are now more vis­i­ble in their re­spec­tive con­stituen­cies?

No. But it is a fact that based on the re­sults the min­is­ters are now try­ing to place more of their work in the me­dia.

See­ing your pho­tographs in the me­dia does not nec­es­sar­i­ly mean that the peo­ple's rep­re­sen­ta­tives are in fact per­form­ing.

Yes, but Clevon, the peo­ple are now call­ing for more vis­i­bil­i­ty, not per­for­mance.

Peo­ple do not want per­for­mance?

Of course they want, but what has hap­pened over the years is that min­is­ters meet their con­stituen­cies once a week. But now I think we are try­ing to por­tray our achieve­ments more. The peo­ple want to see their Gov­ern­ment in ac­tion.

Some are say­ing that the min­is­ters should come out at 4 am, as Mr Warn­er does. Do you think your min­is­ters can match that?

The in­di­ca­tors are not how much you sleep or how much you wake. It is how much you do, de­liv­er. Mr Warn­er doesn't sleep–whether that is good or bad I don't know, but if you take enough cof­fee you could wake all night as well.I came one morn­ing to work at 4 o'clock and I left 2 am the next morn­ing see­ing peo­ple, and I would do it again if I have to.

Dr Mooni­lal, al­most every politi­cian's vi­sion, I think, is to reach the top of their class...be­com­ing Prime Min­is­ter. What's your vi­sion for T&T?

Of course it is tied in with the phi­los­o­phy of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship pro­grammes and poli­cies un­der the as­tute guid­ance of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.But quite apart from that, my vi­sion is to see that we as a peo­ple con­tin­ue to live and pros­per as one na­tion, re­spect­ing each oth­er's in­di­vid­ual rights. With that kind of ethos there is noth­ing that we can­not achieve un­der this sun when we put our minds to­geth­er for the over­all good of our beloved T&T.

You spoke of some peo­ple sub­sti­tut­ing vis­i­bil­i­ty for per­for­mance. Are you re­fer­ring to Mr Warn­er?

Now, this is the fifth time you men­tioned his name and I sus­pect you have some con­cerns about him, but he is a pe­cu­liar po­lit­i­cal as­pi­rant. Since Ju­ly 29, I don't think he has fixed one road, one box drain and he has not been able to match me with de­liv­ery, be­cause he has found him­self in the op­po­si­tion.

Fi­nal­ly, Dr Mooni­lal, what has be­come of cam­paign promis­es made in 2010, such as hold­ing of ref­er­en­da, cam­paign fi­nance re­form, re­call­ing of par­lia­men­tary rep­re­sen­ta­tives?

We are in fact now work­ing on the po­si­tion pa­per on par­ty fi­nanc­ing, the pro­cure­ment leg­is­la­tion is com­plete, which is now at the doorstep of Par­lia­ment, the land bill is com­plet­ed, and I can as­sure you that all these and oth­er ma­jor promis­es made will be tak­en to Par­lia­ment be­fore the end of this Gov­ern­ment's first term in 2015.


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