Clevon Raphael

Trinidad and To­ba­go is a bro­ken and di­vid­ed coun­try and be­cause of this dis­uni­ty, we can­not come to­geth­er to even fight the crim­i­nals who are mak­ing the lives of cit­i­zens al­most a liv­ing hell.This stance by DR CAR­SON CHARLES, po­lit­i­cal leader of the Na­tion­al Al­liance for Re­con­struc­tion and pres­i­dent of the Na­tion­al In­fra­struc­ture De­vel­op­ment Com­pa­ny (Nid­co), is the dri­ving force be­hind his de­ci­sion to push for a grand al­liance to save the coun­try from fur­ther trau­mat­ic ex­pe­ri­ences.

Charles is al­so ar­gu­ing that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment suf­fered be­cause it did not have the time to prop­er­ly work out its dif­fer­ences, plans and pro­grammes be­cause of the pres­sures of be­ing in gov­ern­ment.

Q: Dr Charles, it is good to see you still in your cushy job as chief hon­cho of Nid­co?

A: (Bursts out laugh­ing and point­ing to a pile of doc­u­ments on his desk at his Mel­bourne Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice on Wednes­day morn­ing) Look at all these pa­pers...I have work for so.

Some peo­ple are ex­press­ing sur­prise that you are still on the job un­der the PP ad­min­is­tra­tion af­ter giv­ing your grand al­liance pro­pos­al at the ILP meet­ing on Sun­day.

I am do­ing my du­ty here, and I said that Dr Ram­bachan and I have a good re­la­tion­ship, and as long as we con­tin­ue to do our work, I guess we can con­tin­ue to re­late to each oth­er on that pro­fes­sion­al lev­el.

Ex­cuse me, Dr Charles, were al­co­holic bev­er­ages served at that func­tion on Sun­day?

(Rocks back in his swiv­el chair, near­ly falling over the chair in an even loud­er burst of laugh­ter) That's a good one, Clevon...that's a good one. Not dur­ing the func­tion, no. I have no idea as I wasn't there.

You may won­der why I asked that ques­tion...

(Still laugh­ing aloud) Of course.

Some are say­ing that per­haps you were ine­bri­at­ed when you made your grand al­liance pro­pos­al.

That wasn't the first time that idea was thrown out, it has been around for a while, and peo­ple are still sur­prised that the NAR stands for al­liance af­ter all these years.

And pray tell, what is the dif­fer­ence be­tween a grand al­liance and a small al­liance?

A grand al­liance is some­thing which is big and grow­ing. We cer­tain­ly did not think the al­liance would start and end with the NAR and the ILP. If that was the im­pres­sion, that is not what was in­tend­ed.

How, Dr Charles, do you think the av­er­age cit­i­zen would de­fine this grand al­liance in the con­text of all the de­vel­op­ments on the po­lit­i­cal scene which is very dy­nam­ic at this time?

It is ex­act­ly that way...dy­nam­ic. You see we start with some­thing small and you grow, so we start with the ILP and NAR. We are go­ing to work to­geth­er, and we would have our first meet­ing in a cou­ple hours from now. From there oth­ers are in­vit­ed, and we ex­pect that some­time oth­ers would find the val­ue in tak­ing part in it.

There are those who are very un­char­i­ta­ble in their crit­i­cism of this pro­pos­al, does that faze you at all?

No. No. I don't pay much at­ten­tion to these words, you know. We pay at­ten­tion to what is re­al, and my view is that we have a bro­ken (a calm com­po­sure and soft tone) coun­try, led by a bro­ken fam­i­ly, be­cause the PP it­self is bro­ken, any­body can see that. It start­ed one way and...

Ex­plain this bro­ken coun­try the­o­ry?

T&T is a di­vid­ed coun­try, every­body is hurt­ing, every­body is di­vid­ed..

More than ever be­fore?

I can­not say it is worse than be­fore, but it is re­al­ly bad right now; look at what is hap­pen­ing on the streets, fam­i­lies turn­ing against each oth­er, fa­thers mur­der­ing their chil­dren. We are in a bad way, Clevon.

The bible says some­thing about those end time in­ci­dents, doesn't it?

What I am say­ing is that we are in a bad way as a coun­try, and a ma­jor rea­son why we are in this con­di­tion is be­cause we are so bad­ly di­vid­ed, one from each oth­er. We can­not even stand up to fight any­thing of im­por­tance...we can­not stand to­geth­er to fight the crim­i­nals, we can­not agree on a uni­fied strat­e­gy to fight them.

We think the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty is by him­self, but he needs the sup­port of the po­lice, of the cit­i­zens, of all kinds of groups in the coun­try...you must have a unit­ed ap­proach, you can­not fight crim­i­nal­i­ty by hav­ing more jails, by hav­ing more judges, or by hav­ing more laws...Ob­vi­ous­ly you need both sides.

The PP to a very large ex­tent could be likened to a grand al­liance...

Yes. It was to unite us all...wasn't that its pur­pose? And what hap­pened in the first year? You had the MSJ go­ing its own mer­ry way. Then the ILP, which took a piece of the UNC and a piece of the COP as well. So we are falling apart in­to pieces, and some­body has got to say let's put this thing back to­geth­er again with the ben­e­fit of hind­sight.

You ad­mit­ted that the PP as a grand al­liance has fall­en or is falling apart, what gives you the op­ti­mism that the same thing wouldn't hap­pen un­der your new ini­tia­tive?

(Sip­ping from a pip­ing hot cup of cof­fee) I was born an op­ti­mist, so if peo­ple won­der why af­ter all these years Car­son Charles is still pur­su­ing uni­ty in this di­vid­ed coun­try, it is be­cause I was born an op­ti­mist. I do be­lieve we can be bet­ter than we were yes­ter­day

What in your opin­ion, Dr Charles, is the most se­ri­ous di­vid­ing fac­tor in the coun­try?

(Quick­ly re­spond­ing) Peo­ple don't spend the time work­ing out their dif­fer­ences and work­ing out ways of liv­ing with their dif­fer­ences in ad­vance. We are too much of a quick fix coun­try. Two men want to work to­geth­er, and the best way to work to­geth­er is to de­cide what you are go­ing to build.

But Dr Charles, didn't the PP have a vi­sion of unit­ing the peo­ple?

(An­oth­er sharp re­sponse) They did not spend suf­fi­cient time, in my view, work­ing out with each oth­er what they were go­ing to do, and I am not go­ing to blame them be­cause it was a rush; Mr Man­ning called an ear­ly gen­er­al elec­tion. The present PM, who was then deputy leader of the UNC, had to be­come the leader of the UNC, a mo­ment lat­er she had to be­come Leader of the Op­po­si­tion and an­oth­er mo­ment be­came the Prime Min­is­ter.

So how much time was there to work out dif­fer­ences, to work out pro­grammes to­geth­er, far less to get the op­por­tu­ni­ty to ac­tu­al­ly try to im­ple­ment any of them to­geth­er be­fore you are in gov­ern­ment.

Are you say­ing, Dr Charles, that af­ter al­most four years they hadn't suf­fi­cient time to get their act to­geth­er, if you are say­ing that was the case?

You mean while you are in gov­ern­ment? Un­der the pres­sures of gov­ern­ment... while you are work­ing with the de­mands of gov­ern­ment? Oh no. The de­mands of gov­ern­ment do not al­low you the lux­u­ry of work­ing out how you are go­ing to fash­ion arrange­ment to co­op­er­ate and so on. The ad­van­tage the NAR has is the fact we went through it first. We know what hap­pened.

Dr, what is the nu­mer­i­cal strength of the NAR, as I am sure you have heard the as­ser­tion that the par­ty is al­most dead?

We have just around 2,000 mem­bers, and we have been on a vig­or­ous dri­ve to re­ac­ti­vate our mem­ber­ship

How do you think this grand al­liance would go down with the PP coali­tion giv­en the re­cent bad po­lit­i­cal blood that flowed dur­ing the re­cent elec­tion cam­paigns?

Well, ob­vi­ous­ly some peo­ple would be won­der­ing what is Car­son Charles all about, how come he talk­ing to Jack Warn­er and the ILP?But isn't that pre­cise­ly what we are sup­posed to be do­ing? We have to learn to talk with the peo­ple we have fall­en out with.

Give the depth of the ac­ri­mo­ny that took place, do you re­al­ly be­lieve this move would mesh with the PP?

Yes it is a chal­lenge, isn't it? it is a chal­lenge not for us, but it is a chal­lenge for peo­ple who have been at war on­ly so re­cent­ly, which be­came so per­son­al at times. I hope that they rise to the chal­lenge.

Have you re­ceived any neg­a­tive com­ments from peo­ple in the hi­er­ar­chy of the PP?

Well there are peo­ple hav­ing dif­fi­cul­ty be­cause of the per­son­al ac­ri­mo­ny that de­vel­oped dur­ing the cam­paign. But bear in mind, time is not on our side. If we wait un­til we cool down and meet some­where in a bar and drink and talk, we will be back to square one.

And if we make last minute arrange­ments for the next gen­er­al elec­tion, that will not work again.

Have you fac­tored in the PNM with this grand al­liance?

(An iron­ic chuck­le) The PNM is the pun­ish­ment we would get for our fail­ure to unite, but we will have a grand al­liance with the PNM af­ter we win the 2015 gen­er­al elec­tion.