Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

jesse.ramdeo@cnc3.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is de­scrib­ing Sun­day’s vig­il for peace, which the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) pub­licly sup­port­ed, as a “dis­mal fail­ure.”

On Sun­day, over 200 peo­ple gath­ered at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, call­ing on the Caribbean re­gion to re­main a zone of peace and de­nounc­ing the mil­i­tary build-up as ten­sions be­tween the Unit­ed States and Venezuela es­ca­lat­ed. The event, themed Be­cause No­body Wins a War, was or­gan­ised by a coali­tion of civ­il so­ci­ety groups, in­clud­ing the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice, the Eman­ci­pa­tion Sup­port Com­mit­tee, and oth­er or­gan­i­sa­tions.

While JTUM leader An­cel Ro­get did not at­tend, the union sup­port­ed the event and, last Fri­day, is­sued a state­ment call­ing for the Caribbean to main­tain its peace­ful po­si­tion. JTUM stressed that any form of mil­i­tary con­flict in the Caribbean would have dev­as­tat­ing con­se­quences for Caribbean cit­i­zens and could set T&T back “many decades.”

JTUM had backed the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress Gov­ern­ment be­fore the April 28 Gen­er­al Elec­tion and is part of the coali­tion of in­ter­ests.

But re­spond­ing to ques­tions about JTUM’s stance and the ral­ly tak­ing place, the Prime Min­is­ter yes­ter­day said she was not con­cerned about any fall­out af­ter the known al­ly of the Gov­ern­ment threw its sup­port be­hind the calls for peace. Asked whether the union’s move could sig­nal a rift, Per­sad-Bisses­sar dis­missed any such sug­ges­tion.

The Prime Min­is­ter la­belled the vig­il a dis­mal fail­ure and al­so took aim at civ­il so­ci­ety groups.

“The ma­jor­i­ty of cit­i­zens are fed up with gim­mick­ry and fak­e­ness, mask­ing as civ­il so­ci­ety, par­tic­u­lar­ly civ­il so­ci­ety groups that have been in hi­ber­na­tion for the last ten years.”

Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties and for­mer sec­re­tary gen­er­al of the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union, Clyde El­der, said he sup­port­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s po­si­tion.

He not­ed that while JTUM has his­tor­i­cal­ly worked along­side the Gov­ern­ment, the union is al­so en­ti­tled to act in­de­pen­dent­ly.

“I don’t think so. JTUM has its role and func­tion to per­form in­de­pen­dent of the Gov­ern­ment, and we re­spect what­ev­er their role and po­si­tion is,” he said.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed al­so down­played talk of ten­sion be­tween the Gov­ern­ment and JTUM.

He ex­plained that while JTUM has been seen as a Gov­ern­ment al­ly, that re­la­tion­ship does not mean uni­for­mi­ty on every is­sue.

“I mean, JTUM is an al­ly or friend of the Gov­ern­ment, that does not mean that every sin­gle thing that the Gov­ern­ment does or de­cides is go­ing to cause a fall­out be­cause we are a democ­ra­cy, and in a democ­ra­cy, it al­lows every­one to have a dif­fer­ence of opin­ion, ideas, and thoughts that were nev­er put out be­fore,” Mo­hammed said.