Why is it nec­es­sary to de­mean those who serve their fel­low cit­i­zens? Politi­cians in the gayelle beat­ing each oth­er with bois, that’s par for the course. As the say­ing goes, if yuh ’fraid pow­der, doh play mas. But why should CEPEP work­ers and pro­fes­sion­als be giv­en po­lit­i­cal bois?

There are thought­ful and less con­tentious av­enues to im­ple­ment poli­cies. Any new gov­ern­ment wants to make changes in align­ment with its agen­da. That’s ex­pect­ed. Un­for­tu­nate­ly, the ex­er­cise of po­lit­i­cal pow­er po­ten­tial­ly dam­aged the rep­u­ta­tions of pro­fes­sion­als, just be­cause they were ap­point­ed un­der a pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment.

Pro­fes­sion­als and work­ers were bru­tal­ly jet­ti­soned, as were bil­lion-dol­lar so­cial and eco­nom­ic projects that were al­so elec­toral man­dates of pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ments. Each regime crash­es the for­mer regime’s projects, wast­ing bil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey.

A po­lit­i­cal trade union leader said the (CEPEP) work­ers were “col­lat­er­al dam­age” in the nec­es­sary im­ple­men­ta­tion of the Gov­ern­ment’s agen­das. Si­lence from his trade union col­leagues. They then de­fend­ed their ac­tions by claim­ing the for­mer gov­ern­ment caused thou­sands of job loss­es by shut­ting down Petrotrin and Ca­roni and forced a 4 per cent wage in­crease on work­ers while pay­ing it­self 40 per cent.

But that is pre­cise­ly why they joined forces to fire the PNM gov­ern­ment. The trade union­ists have con­ve­nient­ly for­got­ten that, as min­is­ters, they are now en­joy­ing the ben­e­fits of the huge min­is­te­r­i­al wage in­creas­es they cam­paigned against.

“The work­ers have be­come col­lat­er­al dam­age,” said Clyde El­der, min­is­ter and for­mer union leader, claim­ing the Gov­ern­ment had to au­dit and re­struc­ture the al­leged­ly cor­rupt Com­mu­ni­ty-based En­vi­ron­men­tal Pro­tec­tion and En­hance­ment Pro­gramme. A few months ago, he marched the streets in the name of work­er jus­tice but has since trad­ed in his union garb for el­e­gant suits.

With­out no­tice, thou­sands of work­ers, among the most vul­ner­a­ble in so­ci­ety, end­ed up job­less. Sure, it is nec­es­sary to au­dit and re­struc­ture CEPEP, but dis­miss­ing thou­sands of work­ers while the catchy slo­gan “when the UNC wins, every­body wins” still rang in their ears must have been trau­ma­tis­ing.

“Your life doesn’t have to be cut­ting grass and clean­ing drains.” “We are a na­tion of grass cut­ters.” The politi­cians over­looked the dig­ni­ty and so­ci­etal val­ue of peo­ple earn­ing an hon­est liveli­hood. Grass cut­ters or groundskeep­ers play a vi­tal role in main­tain­ing the health of pub­lic spaces. Ap­pro­pri­ate­ly trained, they can ac­quire hor­ti­cul­tur­al knowl­edge to cre­ate and sus­tain healthy and beau­ti­ful en­vi­ron­ments. They’re the main­te­nance tech­ni­cians we need, as apt­ly re­vealed by the shab­by state of pub­lic spaces, which ex­em­pli­fies why the CEPEP pro­gramme must be re­struc­tured and ef­fi­cient­ly man­aged in the con­text of lo­cal gov­ern­ment, whose re­spon­si­bil­i­ty it is to main­tain pub­lic spaces. CEPEP ac­counts for less than 1.0 per cent of the labour force.

“He’s a failed CEO from Bar­ba­dos,” the Gov­ern­ment tout­ed as it scrapped the WASA trans­for­ma­tion plan and fired Mr Kei­throy Hal­l­i­day, the for­mer CEO of WASA. The Gov­ern­ment caused the ap­point­ment of the Cen­tral Bank Gov­er­nor, Dr Alvin Hi­laire, to be re­voked. Dr Hi­laire, a con­sum­mate pro­fes­sion­al, up­held the bank’s con­fi­den­tial­i­ty reg­u­la­tion and re­fused to di­vulge for­eign ex­change users’ in­for­ma­tion. Still lin­ger­ing in the pub­lic do­main is the last gov­ern­ment’s fir­ing, around 2015, of an­oth­er CB gov­er­nor, Mr Jwala Ram­bar­ran.

Then the Op­po­si­tion, ob­serv­ing board ap­point­ments, wasn’t sure whether they were in Bangladesh or New Del­hi. That had to be a case of po­lit­i­cal ta­ban­ca.

“Let us be clear, there are no in­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors … They are pres­i­den­tial sen­a­tors … ap­point­ed by Pres­i­dent Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo, a long-stand­ing and deeply em­bed­ded fig­ure with­in the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment.” They are “aligned with the PNM ide­ol­o­gy, pro-es­tab­lish­ment, pro-elite, pro-sta­tus quo.” “They are eat-ah-food Sen­a­tors.” Harsh in­sults. De­lib­er­ate lies.

“You could shoot him in the back and ex­plain your­self af­ter,” said the Min­is­ter of De­fence. In any con­text, it was an ex­hor­ta­tion to shoot im­pul­sive­ly and reck­less­ly; that is not the way to em­pow­er fright­ened cit­i­zens. The Min­is­ter of Home Af­fairs, a for­mer po­lice of­fi­cer, en­dorsed the un­wise state­ment. His for­mer col­leagues will be shot if gun own­ers aren’t sure the of­fi­cers at their door are gen­uine.

Now, some com­ic re­lief. The Gov­ern­ment’s trust­ed, “AI-pow­ered na­tion­al dig­i­tal as­sis­tant” for all of­fi­cial in­for­ma­tion is called “Anan­si”. There couldn’t be a bet­ter so­bri­quet for a gov­ern­ment and its trust­ed en­ti­ty. That favourite folk spi­der is not­ed for trick­ery.

Any crit­i­cism of the Gov­ern­ment is like­ly to bring ac­cu­sa­tions of po­lit­i­cal bias and rhetor­i­cal ques­tions about the for­mer gov­ern­ment’s per­for­mance. The elec­torate fired them. We now have an­oth­er op­por­tu­ni­ty to make this twin is­land a safe, har­mo­nious, and healthy en­vi­ron­ment for fu­ture pros­per­i­ty.

Thought­ful and ma­ture po­lit­i­cal be­hav­iour, and re­spect for grass cut­ters’ work, these are what we need to set the right tone and ex­am­ple for our chil­dren.