Ra­mona Ram­di­al

Last Fri­day, the US em­bassy pro­claimed strength­ened co­op­er­a­tion be­tween our coun­tries through the ac­ti­va­tion of Joint Task Force West­ern Hemi­sphere by US SOUTH­COM and our na­tion’s on­go­ing par­tic­i­pa­tion in the Amer­i­c­as Counter Car­tel Coali­tion. This fol­lows our Prime Min­is­ter’s an­nounce­ment that 30 joint army/po­lice posts will be es­tab­lished at var­i­ous lo­ca­tions through­out our coun­try.

When I was MP, I had called for 24-hour joint po­lice/army pa­trols in Cen­tral. I cer­tain­ly sup­port this na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ini­tia­tive to­day. At the very least, it is a dif­fer­ent strat­e­gy that rais­es the vis­i­bil­i­ty of the pro­tec­tive ser­vices. It can­not now be said that the go-to crime re­duc­tion tech­nique is the SoE alone. I con­duct­ed a rudi­men­ta­ry so­cial me­dia poll on cit­i­zens’ per­cep­tions of the new strat­e­gy.

Of the al­most 500 re­spon­dents, on­ly a hand­ful op­posed. A few al­so said that it is “ZoSO in dis­guise,” but I al­so sup­port the ZoSO bill’s re­turn to Par­lia­ment. Let’s see how these mo­bile posts are im­ple­ment­ed. It seems the PNM-con­trolled TPRC was tak­ing such a hard look at one that they end­ed up stop­ping con­struc­tion of a post at the Ed­die Hart grounds in Tacarigua due to a lack of con­sul­ta­tion. Hope­ful­ly, im­proved na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty and im­proved com­mu­ni­ca­tion will pre­vail.

The tus­sle be­tween po­lit­i­cal par­ties is par for the course, but the de­scent in­to racist stereo­typ­ing and the ut­ter­ances of racial slurs by any­one should be ve­he­ment­ly dis­cour­aged. The boo­ing of Cul­ture Min­is­ter Michelle Ben­jamin marred the African Eman­ci­pa­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions in PoS, but it got even worse when she was con­front­ed by a woman re­peat­ing: “We will re­mem­ber that you promised food for to­mor­row while we starve to­day.”

UNC ac­tivist Chris­tine “Twig­gy” Levia, shock­ing­ly, post­ed a video to ex­plain the crit­ic’s re­ac­tion! She claimed that the Min­is­ter did not de­liv­er on her promis­es. Did this have any­thing to do with months of un­paid wages and out­stand­ing funds for two soup kitchens? Twig­gy ad­vised min­is­ters to stop “ma­m­aguy­ing peo­ple”.

What was she promised that she did not re­ceive? Isn’t her job at WASA enough? Mak­ing promis­es dur­ing an elec­tion cam­paign is nor­mal, but it is the de­liv­ery of them all that is the prob­lem. A politi­cian be­ing booed for what­ev­er rea­son is al­so not new to our pol­i­tics. I learned that a politi­cian must be most ac­ces­si­ble and ser­vice-ori­ent­ed.

I re­mem­ber our “Serve the Peo­ple!” (x3) mantra of the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. You can’t go wrong with that! Are all con­stituen­cy of­fices open from Mon­day to Fri­day, with staff work­ing to ad­dress all is­sues? Are all MPs and min­is­ters avail­able? Have they been build­ing trust even if they’ve been un­able to keep all their promis­es?

At any rate, at­ten­dance at sig­nif­i­cant pub­lic en­gage­ments should be en­cour­aged. If ven­tur­ing in­to “the bel­ly of the beast,” they should just mo­bilise a con­tin­gent of their own sup­port­ers to in­su­late them against un­nec­es­sary em­bar­rass­ment. This is a com­mon prac­tice. Dur­ing 2010-2015, we en­sured that our sup­port­ers ac­com­pa­nied us in­to po­ten­tial­ly un­friend­ly ter­ri­to­ry.

Run­ning away is a cow­ard­ly prac­tice, but go­ing in de­fence­less, with­out a thick skin, is fool­hardy. As such, I will al­so ad­vise the Gov­ern­ment to show up in full strength at the up­com­ing In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions and car­ry their own sup­port­ers! This will re­store In­de­pen­dence Day’s prece­dence to the gov­ern­ment of to­day.

NGC chair­man Ger­ald Ramdeen teased that the Prime Min­is­ter would be mak­ing sig­nif­i­cant an­nounce­ments re­gard­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor this week. He men­tioned the work of the NGC, the Min­istry of En­er­gy, and “our in­ter­na­tion­al up­stream part­ners” dur­ing the last two months.

Can we ven­ture that the Drag­on has been cap­tured? Man­akin-Cocuina? Lo­ran? It has been es­tab­lished that all ex­ist­ing or planned pipelines, plat­forms, and oth­er in­fra­struc­ture in the vicin­i­ty of these un­tapped re­sources are in Trinidad and To­ba­go’s ter­ri­to­ry. It is com­mon sense that such in­fra­struc­ture and our hy­dro­car­bon pro­cess­ing gate­ways should fa­cil­i­tate Venezuela’s ac­cess to its nat­ur­al gas re­sources.

We look for­ward to a stronger re­la­tion­ship be­tween our gov­ern­ments, which will pro­mote good busi­ness re­la­tions and ben­e­fit the peo­ple of both coun­tries. If such is the case, it is un­der­stand­able why Ramdeen could hard­ly con­tain him­self. Per­haps we struck black gold in the ul­tra-deep? I look for­ward to our PM’s an­nounce­ment of the de­tails. We can­not wait for that forex to flow again. Hope­ful­ly, it will nev­er be wast­ed again like the old “dose of salts”.

While on this top­ic, have we fi­nal­ly iden­ti­fied an op­er­a­tor for our oil re­fin­ery? Might we be so lucky that our en­er­gy sec­tor has made ad­vances on mul­ti­ple fronts? Much dis­cus­sion was had about the AI da­ta cen­tres but the fren­zy has pe­tered out. How far off are we from the due dili­gence and tech­ni­cal plan­ning? Or was there too much op­po­si­tion? What about the MoU for the restart of the old Arcelor Mit­tal iron and steel plant? How soon will Pin­na­cle Steel and Vana­di­um Cor­po­ra­tion be on site, and how soon will the fur­nace be roar­ing again?

I get the sense that our cit­i­zen­ry has been hold­ing on, hop­ing that “bet­ter days” are al­most here. Eco­nom­ic stim­uli can­not come soon enough. I no­tice that Op­po­si­tion sup­port­ers are ful­some in their com­plaints, while Gov­ern­ment sup­port­ers are pro­claim­ing that one year is not enough to un­do a decade of PNM dam­age. I won­der how many of ei­ther group would pre­fer that our coun­try pros­pers re­gard­less of which par­ty is in pow­er.