Ra­mona Ram­di­al

Last week, there was rum­bling and grum­bling amongst the na­tion­al com­mu­ni­ty fol­low­ing the de­c­la­ra­tion of 15 “no protest zones”. I sub­se­quent­ly con­duct­ed my own rudi­men­ta­ry so­cial me­dia poll to de­ter­mine if cit­i­zens were in­ter­est­ed in the cir­cu­lat­ing call for a “na­tion­al shut­down”.

A great many re­spond­ed, and though I de­tect­ed more in favour of protest ac­tion, al­most as many held a di­a­met­ri­cal­ly op­posed per­spec­tive. There were some fake pro­file so­cial me­dia trolls among them, but I still felt that enough truth was re­vealed: Po­lit­i­cal par­ty al­le­giance and even ap­par­ent racism, on all sides, oozed to the sur­face. Quite a few al­so in­di­cat­ed that their fi­nan­cial need to work su­per­seded any of the so­cial jus­tice con­cerns they might hold.

One in­di­vid­ual said, “It de­pends on who’s ask­ing.” That struck me. Do re­spons­es de­pend so heav­i­ly on who is in gov­ern­ment? Would a UNC sup­port­er have ac­cept­ed the ex­tend­ed SoE and the “no protest zones” if a PNM Prime Min­is­ter had im­ple­ment­ed them? Would a PNM sup­port­er main­tain his si­lence if the PNM were in pow­er?

As such, cur­rent na­tion­al chal­lenges can­not be se­ri­ous enough to unite per­sons of dis­parate po­lit­i­cal per­sua­sions and oth­er de­mo­graph­ics. I al­so en­coun­tered in­di­vid­u­als who pre­ferred to en­gage in red-her­ring ar­gu­ments and ad hominem rather than even feign ob­jec­tiv­i­ty. Were any of the demon­stra­tions “im­par­tial”? Or are all these is­sues be­ing hi­jacked by the PNM? In the same way that cer­tain so­cial me­dia per­son­al­i­ties have lost their “in­de­pen­dent” cred­i­bil­i­ty by ac­cept­ing state em­ploy­ment, demon­stra­tions fea­tur­ing promi­nent “PNM” mem­bers can be dis­par­aged as “po­lit­i­cal”.

Re­gard­less, I re­call the heady days of 2010 when then Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar’s war cry was “Vox pop­uli, vox dei!” be­fore we swept in­to gov­ern­ment. Is it un­fair for peo­ple to in­ter­pret the “No protest zones” as a muz­zling of that very vox pop­uli?

As we cel­e­brate our na­tion’s elec­tion to the tem­po­rary seat on the Unit­ed Na­tions’ Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil as GRU­LAC rep­re­sen­ta­tive, we should be even more con­scious of our glob­al stand­ing. We cur­rent­ly hold an 83 per cent score on the “Free­dom in the World” in­dex, but com­plaints from cer­tain groups of cit­i­zens that their civ­il lib­er­ties are be­ing erod­ed might dress us shab­bi­ly be­fore we go to the ball.

As some cit­i­zens want their voic­es heard, oth­ers want to en­gage with the Prime Min­is­ter. The Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go has been count­ing the days since PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar last showed up for a post-Cab­i­net con­fer­ence, and it has gone past a year. Some have even sug­gest­ed that they would even pre­fer if she as­sumed a com­bat­ive ap­proach to the me­dia like US Pres­i­dent Don­ald Trump than to com­plete­ly ig­nore post-Cab.

So on the one hand, cit­i­zens are re­strict­ed from com­plain­ing at cer­tain key lo­ca­tions, and on the oth­er, the Prime Min­is­ter has been un­avail­able to an­swer the ques­tions they may send through the re­porters at­tend­ing the post-Cab. No amount of Cab­i­net min­is­ters can com­pen­sate for PMQs.

On the heels of the OPR’s probes in­to re­cent con­tract awards at HDC and Land­mark­TT comes a re­port that Her­itage may have prac­ticed se­lec­tive bid­ding ahead of the award of a con­tract for the con­struc­tion of a $570 mil­lion off­shore pro­duc­tion and com­pres­sion fa­cil­i­ty.

Ques­tions al­so arose as to the speed with which the bids from two of the con­trac­tors were ac­cept­ed, as well as their ca­pac­i­ty to ex­e­cute the par­tic­u­lar project.

If the OPR paus­es yet an­oth­er project, it will be an­oth­er hold-up of de­sired eco­nom­ic stim­u­lus. How can the gov­ern­ment fast-track such in­jec­tions with­out run­ning afoul of the OPR? Those min­is­te­r­i­al pro­cure­ment units need to wake up.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Beck­les-Robin­son’s re­place­ment of Sen­a­tor John-Bates with Sen­a­tor Dr Mar­garet Satya Rose ap­pears to be a move aimed at the gov­ern­ment’s pro­cure­ment prob­lems. She is a sea­soned lawyer who spe­cialis­es in pub­lic pro­cure­ment. It is in the gov­ern­ment’s in­ter­ests to tight­en up its pro­cure­ment pro­to­cols to, at least, de­ny the Op­po­si­tion easy talk­ing points.

Of course, it is in the pub­lic’s in­ter­est that eco­nom­ic stim­uli are fast-tracked, but with ac­count­abil­i­ty and in­tegri­ty. Can that hap­pen?

At last Fri­day’s open­ing of the sec­ond ses­sion of the 13th Par­lia­ment, PM Per­sad-Bissess­sar an­nounced that the mid-year bud­get re­view will be de­liv­ered on June 15 and that the gov­ern­ment will be seek­ing a bud­get sup­ple­men­ta­tion of $2.93 bil­lion, in large part for the pay­ment of in­creased salaries to 60,000 pub­lic ser­vants.

Those num­bers should at least cov­er mem­bers of the ma­jor pub­lic sec­tor unions. This move will si­lence protests more ef­fec­tive­ly than any num­ber of “no protest zones”. The mere an­nounce­ment would have cre­at­ed a calm­ing ef­fect. How­ev­er, the true and full ef­fect will on­ly be known when those in­creas­es and back­pay are de­posit­ed in­to the ac­counts of those 60,000.

This will al­so in­crease eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, of course.

The PM al­so spoke of the cre­ation of over 14,000 jobs since her gov­ern­ment took of­fice, with up­com­ing sus­tain­able em­ploy­ment in hous­ing, man­u­fac­tur­ing, tech­nol­o­gy, and in­dus­try, and that youth em­ploy­ment had fall­en by al­most five per cent.

The Prime Min­is­ter al­so high­light­ed Exxon­Mo­bil’s fast-tracked mas­sive ul­tra-deep­wa­ter seis­mic pro­gramme and the en­try of Oc­ci­den­tal Pe­tro­le­um, which fur­ther bol­sters Trinidad and To­ba­go’s glob­al en­er­gy stand­ing.

Per­haps if the Prime Min­is­ter is more present at post-Cab, and if she re­duces some of the NPZs, the “bet­ter days are com­ing” mes­sage would be bet­ter re­ceived.