OWTU SPEAKS OCTOBER 11 2002
the youth of the country must be complimented
I think that more than anyone else, the youth of the country must be complimented for their abandonment, this time, of the cynicism with which they have treated the politics and elections for a long time now. Indeed it might well be said that it is the young voter who broke the 18-18 political and constitutional dead lock that almost brought everything to a halt in Trinidad and Tobago. The youth of the nation whom we have been too ever ready to condemn and dismiss as villains and worthless have helped to decide serious matters for the country by their very mature intervention in last Monday’s electoral process. They must be congratulated and celebrated for their most disciplined, informed and decisive intervention.
They must therefore not be forgotten, their issues must neither be shunted aside nor given the mere plaster on a sore treatment. The issues affecting the youth are matter of fact and fundamental national issues and we ignore and avoid them at the society’s peril. The new Patrick Manning Government, given a new lease on political life as has been afforded by our youth, had better not play political games with the important issues affecting the youth.
Where then should the government start?
A quite simple and independent suggestion – whatever the manifesto promises may have been – the challenge for all of us now is to come up with strategies, strategies that have received some measure of national consensus as to how we can best get the country going forward with the youth being involved and playing an important participatory role.
Human misery, poverty, structural unemployment, crime and violence, the state of the nation’s schools and the education system – all worsen by the day while the politicians and official society offer platitudinous solutions like Anaconda or Heal and Feel. Those only be short term plasters on sores that are festering and that require more clinical treatment and curing.
We need an assessment of the impact of trade liberalization on jobs, and the relationship between the job market and crime and violence.
We need to adopt a Programme towards Jobs, Quality Jobs and Job Security for All. We must identify and make clear that the pendulum has swung too far in favour of capital, the very rich and powerful; that the present order is not sustainable – economically, socially, politically and environmentally. We need to hear and positively respond to the many calls for major reforms and reorganization. We need to be sensitive that those calls for new forms of governance stressing on inclusiveness and participation are a counter to the marginalisation of the masses, which marginalisation, we have seen, can only lead to ustoppable political explosion as we have seen elsewhere – Jamaica is an example.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2002 OCTOBER 04
Not the Who, but the What we should vote for
At any other time, the OWTU would have mounted its INTEGRITY PLATFORM to advise the electorate of Trinidad and Tobago what not to vote for in the general elections on Monday 7th October. But we were busy in our own campaign to protect the name of the institution that is the OWTU and its appreciable resources from the hands of those engaged in adventurism and self-serving motives. We won. We won convincingly even against the intervention of the UNC. So that this is the end of a long week in which the country’s all important OWTU elections were held and the weekend eve of General Elections.
In the OWTU our own democracy allows for and respects our members right to membership in support for any Party of his/her choice. So that we do not generally tell our members who to vote for in the political arena. We however remind all of our members all the time that whatever we have – whatever we enjoy as workers – have always come as a result of hard work and struggles and representation made by our Trade Union. The Political Parties when in government have generally sought to take away from our benefits, rights and freedoms rather than make life easier for us.
Corruption in government and in the conduct of public affairs is a major means by which workers and the poor are robbed and cheated.
The practice of racism in the distribution of goods and services, employment and other public dispensation divide workers and the poor and make for an unequal and inequitable contribution to national development, peace, good order and harmonious relationships. We do not therefore point to the who, but the what we should vote for. We should repudiate all who have transgressed against the interests of the workers and the poor. We must reject the corrupt, the crooked and the thief. We must reject all those who have abandoned decency and have engaged in gorging themselves at the public trough. We must look beyond opportunistic manifesto and platform promises. We must not trust in our streets those who would rob and exploit us in their high offices.
We must reject racism and those who call for war and the drums of war. All should vote on Monday. Go Peacefully, Go Deliberately, Go Determinedly and vote for Peace, Justice, Integrity, Honesty and a better T & T if you can find all of these among the Parties and their candidates.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2002 OCTOBER 02
OWTU is wary of life in T & T
This evening I wish to thank the entire membership of the OWTU for each of their contributions to the democracy that makes our Union strong. And I must particularly thank all such members who supported my team and me to win convincingly, the OWTU’s Central Executive Elections held last Monday, albeit with a lower than anticipated poll. The Union’s electorate chose a proven track record of honest, fearless, intelligent and independent leadership, over selfishness, bloated egos, lies, mischief and public misinformation. Support for the Rebels team in these elections exemplified the intelligence and objectivity of the great majority of OWTU’s members.
I had my own suspicions about attempts at political interference in these Executive elections but I thought too that those most likely to interfere (and for obvious reasons) would be otherwise occupied at this time and too busy to meddle in our trade union business. I thought that the Fox, his garden rats and bush cockroaches will have their corruption-soiled fingers busy trying to hold on to what they now control for the bigger event on October 7th. I was wrong. I miscalculated. The gnomes of the Unashamed Notoriously Corrupt (Party) in Pointe a Pierre and environs were busy working with their ego-imbalanced opportunist minions in the OWTU to defeat Mc Leod in the Union elections. And why? Because Mc Leod is a known critic of the UNC, its corruption, malfeasance and absolutely immoral conduct in public affairs. ‘We will do for him’ – that was the cry by some fools and their friends who didn’t even understand that at Petrotrin especially, today, there is such absolute need for strong OWTU with experienced, knowledgeable and fearless leadership. They fail to reckon that even untrained Dougy, pompek with the funny name Fifi will depend on strong independent leadership with any changed dispensation at Pointe a Pierre after October 7. They know not of the threat that retribution will be swift if some racist political bandits of environmental unimportance were to ascend to energetic ministerial rank next week. ‘Destroy Mc Leod’, was their theme as corruption, racism and TDM made strange but convenient bedfellows.
Reprobates they are – no scruples, no independence – only a desperate craving to occupy some office or other.
No wonder that the TDM’s Wannabe somebody proposed that the Ossie Wilson/Cayenne controlled EBC should superintend OWTU’s elections. Shameless and brass faced with tallo grease.
The degenerating fox has a name for all of them who are like that. Privately he calls them crapauds. That’s how he called Muriel. That’s how he calls Vincent the last and the second to last in labour. That’s how he calls Peters the fisher boy from Mayaro and Lamby in Diego, the immediate past Speaker and the big grinning gargoyle fool who has made no Mark in anything. He jokes that the TDM circus boys all wear the physiognomy of greasy tadpoles yet unable to slip away from manipulation through operatives like Kelvin, the nail polish maker and the bar lady who looks like a mannish puzzle.
All of that and the Rebels prevailed! Good Victory it was! The conscious workers of Trinidad and Tobago and members of the OWTU whatever their political affiliation in the great majority, have always stood with their Union.
OWTU is wary of life in T & T. It is like that great tree that is planted by the rivers of water. And the Rebels shall not be moved. Trinidad and Tobago, next Monday, you should do like the members of the OWTU have done. Go and Vote. Vote wisely, vote intelligently and objectively.