Dr Bhoe Tewarie

Over 63 years, T&T has had end­less con­tro­ver­sy. CEPEP and URP are in the news again. So en­trenched are these two words that we can’t re­mem­ber what each let­ter in the words stands for. But they have be­come con­tro­ver­sial to­day be­cause these bea­cons of pa­tron­age, by what­ev­er name from ever since, are al­so in­stru­ments of gang­ster fi­nanc­ing. The Gov­ern­ment has de­cid­ed to shut them down and clean them up af­ter con­duct­ing a re­view. The Op­po­si­tion claims that poor peo­ple and their fam­i­lies are be­ing put on the bread­line and the Gov­ern­ment is cru­el.

The sec­ond con­tro­ver­sy in­volves threats to the lives of min­is­ters. It was re­port­ed in the press that $2.8 mil­lion was al­lo­cat­ed for the ex­e­cu­tion of three min­is­ters and one per­son re­spon­si­ble for man­ag­ing CEPEP. The CEPEP con­tracts for gang­sters must be quite lu­cra­tive for such a sub­stan­tial boun­ty to be post­ed. The Gov­ern­ment is tak­ing the threats to of­fi­cials se­ri­ous­ly. The Op­po­si­tion thinks the talk of threats is ex­ag­ger­at­ed. The third con­tro­ver­sy in­volves the can­cel­la­tion of the In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade. Gov­ern­ment said it was can­celled be­cause the gath­er­ing of so many dig­ni­taries in a shared space, in the midst of pre­vail­ing threats, presents a clear and present dan­ger. The Op­po­si­tion says the can­cel­la­tion was equiv­a­lent to the can­cel­la­tion of In­de­pen­dence and the Gov­ern­ment needs to prop­er­ly ex­plain the ex­tent of the threat to jus­ti­fy the ac­tion.

Yet an­oth­er con­tro­ver­sy is the Exxon Mo­bil sign­ing. The Gov­ern­ment is pre­sent­ing this as a ma­jor win for in­vest­ment and a ma­jor plus for po­ten­tial deep­wa­ter oil and gas. The Op­po­si­tion is say­ing they start­ed dis­cus­sions on the in­vest­ment, so it is wrong for Gov­ern­ment to claim full cred­it. They are al­so ques­tion­ing the terms of the agree­ment and whether it is ben­e­fi­cial enough to T&T, and they ar­gue that pro­duc­tion will on­ly show far in­to the fu­ture.

CEPEP and URP should be scrapped and re­formed. The pa­tron­age (par­ty-af­fil­i­at­ed con­trac­tors) and fi­nanc­ing of gang­sters (ghost work­ers) can­not be jus­ti­fied and CEPEP work­ers need to move in a year or two to more sus­tain­able forms of liveli­hood. A sys­tem needs to be de­signed for trans­paren­cy, fair­ness, ac­count­abil­i­ty, tran­si­tion and ab­sorp­tion.

Min­is­ters in the last gov­ern­ment each car­ried a se­cu­ri­ty de­tail, some more than oth­ers. Be­cause be­ing a pub­lic of­fi­cial and a po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tive can be dan­ger­ous. I don’t think Op­po­si­tion of­fi­cials would want to see a gov­ern­ment min­is­ter shot at or killed. All par­lia­men­tar­i­ans should have an in­ter­est in op­pos­ing vi­o­lent at­tacks on those who serve po­lit­i­cal­ly in a coun­try which has be­come a gang­ster haven.

The Gov­ern­ment did not can­cel In­de­pen­dence. They can­celled the morn­ing cer­e­mo­ni­al pa­rade and evening fire­works. Does that re­al­ly un­der­mine na­tion­al pride?

What does it mat­ter who thought of en­gag­ing Exxon first? Dur­ing their years in of­fice, the Dr Kei­th Row­ley gov­ern­ment ben­e­fit­ed from nat­ur­al gas pro­vid­ed by in­vest­ments se­cured by the first Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­min­is­tra­tion, so T&T got a re­prieve. And is not un­cer­tain­ty al­ways a fac­tor in drilling for oil and gas?

Par­ti­san pol­i­tics al­most every­where can be child­ish. One is ap­palled by what pass­es for par­ty pol­i­tics in the US, for in­stance. And some­times, po­lit­i­cal ex­cess­es even give democ­ra­cy a bad name. Gen­er­al­ly, the PNM los­es pow­er in T&T when gov­er­nance is so bad the coun­try s well-be­ing is threat­ened - 1986, 1995, 2010 and 2024. Oth­er par­ties which suc­ceed the PNM lose gov­ern­ment when they seem rud­der­less - 1991, 2000/2001 and 2015.

In T&T, par­ties in pow­er try to dec­i­mate the op­po­si­tion. And op­po­si­tion par­ties do what­ev­er they can to bring the gov­ern­ment down. The end re­sult of this is that gov­ern­ing par­ties squan­der many good gov­er­nance op­por­tu­ni­ties by per­pet­u­al­ly cam­paign­ing. And op­po­si­tion par­ties just ques­tion and op­pose every­thing the gov­ern­ment does, which is need­less­ly di­vi­sive.

But who in their right mind would want CEPEP and URP to con­tin­ue as be­fore? Who in their right mind will want to see as­sas­si­na­tions es­ca­late in our coun­try? We have al­ready had an at­tempt­ed coup, an at­tor­ney gen­er­al mur­dered, the Pres­i­dent’s car shot at, and pros­e­cut­ing at­tor­neys ex­e­cut­ed. Why is the can­cel­la­tion of the mil­i­tary pa­rade on In­de­pen­dence Day a heat­ed is­sue for de­bate? What is the point of it? And is the Op­po­si­tion say­ing the gov­ern­ment did some­thing with Exxon that they would not have done? And if so, what?

As we ob­serve the 63rd an­niver­sary of In­de­pen­dence and re­flect on our con­di­tion, just think of how much bet­ter off we could have been as a coun­try, if our politi­cians were more pru­dent, mea­sured, and com­mit­ted to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment than par­ti­san po­lit­i­cal ad­van­tage. The fu­ture waits to be cre­at­ed by what we do now.