2006-03-01
Good Evening and Welcome back to the realm of sane thinking and moderate behaviour.
The Carnival was great and baring the few untoward incidences of violence in which there were fatalities, the street theatre and all the partying and revelry went peacefully in a general sense. But had we the power and authority so to do, we’d issue an order saying –‘fete done, back to work’.
We would know to be mindful though, of some folks’ inability to answer the bell this morning due to their own extreme enthusiasm and perhaps some over indulgence. It will be interesting to discover that the church did not have enough ashes for absolution this evening.
We would be asked to be mindful too, that for some, the fete continues at the Manzanilla and Maracas cool down and would be extended to include other farewell type functions especially for the visiting foreigners ending with Champs in Concert on Saturday Night.
‘OWTU Speaks’ salutes and congratulates all the winners of competitions and the mas makers, fete promoters, all participants, security personnel and contributors to the successful festival that Trinidad’s Carnival is renowned for.
On another important note, we extend warm congratulations to Comrade Portia Simpson Miller on her election to President of the Peoples’ National Party (PNP) of Jamaica last Sunday. By virtue of her being President-elect of the PNP, the governing Party, Portia Simpson Miller becomes Prime Minister of Jamaica when sitting Prime Minister PJ Patterson voluntarily steps down at month’s end.
PJ’s decision to step down as President and leader of his party while in power, and without rancor or bitterness has served as a significant boost to Caribbean advocates of decency in the politics and wholesome principles which repudiate the notion that politics has a morality of its own. The elevation of Portia Simpson to Jamaica’s Prime Ministership later this month is most significant not only from the stand point of her being the first woman in Jamaica to achieve that status but also of great importance is her being the one Cabinet Minister who never severed her connections with the working class and the poor. We salute Portia and we will celebrate her inauguration at month’s end.
Amidst all of the foregoing there was some sad news. We regret to announce the death of John La Rose OWTU’s.
2006-03-03
Good Evening and Welcome to OWTU Speaks!
We think that some very important and far reaching decisions might be better and more objectively considered if they are postponed until our policy making authorities are themselves fully recovered from the euphoria and the mental and physical exhaustion of the Carnival. Attention is drawn to a newspaper report today, headlined – ‘THA to fight crime with private security.’ We qualify that report as being the most important of all the news in the papers today.
Good intentions are often the catalyst which fuels enthusiasm that sometimes drives one into the realm of indiscretion. I hasten to add that the seemingly good intentions of the Chief Secretary and his Executive Council of the THA are not now being questioned. Their responsibility to the State and the philosophy which underpins that responsibility however, are what we believe we have a right to critique. But let us not get too far ahead of the issue of concern. What is the story?
The report written by Earl Manmohan of the Daily Express says – ‘The Tobago House of Assembly (THA) plans to hire private security to patrol the crime hot spots in the island.
THA Chief Secretary, Orville London disclosed this at the Weekly post Executive Council Press Conference yesterday. He said the plan would be carried out “even if it is a pilot project” until the Assembly established its own police force. He said he expected a “more meaningful response” from National Security Minister, Martin Joseph to his request for the early passage of the required legislation. He explained that the private security patrols would be used especially on secluded beaches and villas in the South West of the island where some very unsavory and criminal offences were committed recently. The Chief Secretary, according to the reporter’s story, went on to explain what on the surface appears to be a near convincing rationale for the Executive Council’s plan to hire private security to fight crime on the sister isle of Tobago.
Our first point: The emotional response in any issue is usually a sure means by which to obliterate the balanced roundness of head conscious deliberation.
Secondly, and perhaps most important is the ill advised and no-doubt illegal planned delegation of stately responsibility for the public’s well being to private interests. This smacks of World Bank/IMF orthodoxy which instructs the retirement of Government and State involvement in any activity which can spin a dollar. Anytime that private enterprise is engaged there is a genuflection before the ‘altar of the almighty dollar’ and the activity is generally turned into an industry. Heaven forbids our debilitating crime situation being made into a thriving industry any more than it has already become an enterprise with private interest involvement. It must never be allowed.
The police service of Trinidad and Tobago is responsible for the internal security in the state of Trinidad and Tobago according to the laws of Trinidad and Tobago. Additionally, crime detection and prosecution wherever in the national community of Trinidad and Tobago remain the responsibility of the Law enforcement agencies of Trinidad and Tobago namely the Police. And what is called for here by the THA is really for the necessary human and physical resources be made available to the Trinidad and Tobago Police Service to deal with the issue of crime and lawlessness in Tobago as it must do in Trinidad and Tobago.
Even as we must all be concerned about and contribute to the eradication of crime, no private interest is to be delegated profitable interest in that statal responsibility. Sorry Mr. Chief Secretary.
Have a good evening and peaceful weekend.
2006-03-06
Good Evening and Welcome to OWTU Speaks.
I hope that your weekend was restful and good, the continuing crime situation notwithstanding. The Salaries Review Commission (SRC) seems to have fallen short of recommending that a job evaluation exercise be done since it could not determine itself – it is apparent – what are the contents, duties and responsibilities which describe the job of Member of Parliament and therefore assist in establishing a fair value and compensation which should be attached to it. It is interesting to note that many of the incumbents in the job, themselves seem devoid of knowledge of their key duties and responsibilities.
I recall the debate of the SRC’s Report and its Recommendations in the House of Representatives on Carnival Friday – it sounded like another strain of traditional mas – “pay the devil”. Two acolytes – one with a whip, the other like a dried twig – appealed that consideration be given to the extensive terrain which they must travewrse to meet with their constituents.
Chief of the Pierrot Grenades sought to bring some philosophy to the job of representation a la Westminster style but that too exposed the serious death of knowledge and understanding of the tremendous responsibility of a representative of the people by ‘representatives of other interests’. So, that to the shouts of “pay me more” from the devil’s side of the House, an itinerant minstrel on the other side – his case already well-represented – responded, ‘the job of the members opposite is only part time’.
And the blind ‘ayes’ had it.
We contend today that the SRC and the House failed to delineate between the person and the job of Member of Parliament. In other words, the experts would suggest that they failed to put the job in proper perspective and were influenced by the behaviour and practices of representatives of the people who do part time representation of others and overtime representation of self interest. And we say without fear of contradiction that this is not limited to Parliamentarians – it is a pervasive practice. So as many as the cap fits will just have to adjust the head band as is necessary.
All of that said, we wish only to reiterate that the workers who create the wealth that makes possible the emoluments of those who come under the perview of the Salaries Review Commission, have taken careful note.
We make legitimate claim for the principle of equity to be applied across the band of wage and salary earners and beneficiaries of private retirement and NIS earnings.
We consider this a good time and that the SRC’S recommendations could not be more opportune.
2006-03-08
Good Evening and special welcome to OWTU Speaks!
Today and always, OWTU salutes all the women of Trinidad and Tobago and the Caribbean on the occasion of International Women’s Day 2006. And we recognize all the women around the world.
We recognize the Beijing Declaration which asserts that ‘women’s empowerment and their full participation on the basis of equality in all spheres of society, including participation in the decision-making process and access to power, are fundamental for the achievement of equality, development and peace”. We subscribe too, to Secretary-General Kofi Anan’s instructive message says at the opening sentences – ‘The International Community is finally beginning to understand a fundamental principle: women are every bit as affected as any man by the challenges facing humanity in the 21st century – in economic and social development, as well as in peace and security. Often, they are more affected. It is, therefore, right and indeed necessary that women should be engaged in the decision-making processes in all areas, with equal strength and in equal numbers.”
The OWTU continues to invite and strives to involve the inclusion of its women comrades in all the workers’ activities and at all levels of our Union’s leadership and governance. We believe that progress for women workers is progress for all workers. May the celebrations of this day, 2006, be successful and memorable.
Next issue!
We could not let news of the ICSID ruling in the FW Oil claim against the Trinidad and Tobago government to just go by without a comment from the OWTU, the true protectors of our national interests.
The International Centre for the Settlement of Investment Disputes (ICSID), last week, dismissed a US$100 m – TT$630m claim by FW Oil of Houston, Texas against the Trinidad and Tobago Government over an alleged unlawful denial of a contract to that US company to explore the rich Trinmar South West Soldado oil fields sometime between September 2000 and February 2001. there is little more that we may say today to emphasize the extent to which allegations of bribery and corruption had become pervasive in those days of UNC milch-cow-self destruction. The South West Soldado scandal was among a long list of issues identified with malfeasance and gouging at the public trough which we took to the our ‘Integrity Platform’ during the November – December 2000 General Election Campaign.
The indiscipline and misconduct of top Government officials and their operatives on Boards were sometimes describes as the behaviour of thieves whose gluttony had them believe that there was no tomorrow and that everyone else was blind. Some observers suggested that the malfeasants were culturally corrupt.
The tendering process was compromised and flawed and those who tailored it seemed to have cut base lines and corners to facilitate pockets for foreign ‘bills’. Some of this also remind us of the intemperate gnome, Bart Simpson, in the television comics and his father Homer who bears a strikingly comical resemblance of a former Junior Minister. Enough said!
We are glad that FW Oil’s claim was dismissed and that their incursion into our SW Soldado oil mine and the grand sell out of our national interest were blocked. The OWTU’S position and that of the four(4) Petrotrin Directors who resigned in disgust in November 2000 have been vindicated. We wish though that the allegations of bribery and corruption be pursued and thoroughly investigated and that Trinidad and Tobago recovers at least the $M’s in expenses and costs incurred in appearances before the arbitration panel.
Have a good and peaceful evening Trinidad and Tobago.
I am Errol Mc Leod for the OWTU Speaks.
2006-03-10
Good evening and welcome to OWTU Speaks!
Thank God its Friday!
Developing a topic and constructing piece even for a five(5) minute commentary every other day of the week by a person otherwise occupied as I am, can oft times be quite challenging. ‘What do we talk about today’ is a question difficult to settle – our multiplicity of major national and other niggling issues notwithstanding. Is there anything new, anything fresh and offering hope, dynamism for change? What we find is that what is offered as new is really the same old prescription in obscure and characteristically square bottles with new labels. They have long but truncated antecedents – they are easy to trace however.
Today was one of those days when a topic would hardly jell until I stumbled on the news of the coming of the country’s next political baby – to be presented in swaddling clothes and all and to be named ‘DNA’. And I wondered – ‘Why DNA?’ Are the midwife and putative parents of the baby contemplating that it may be still born?
My search for information led me to the American Heritage Desk Dictionary which says that DNA – Deoxyribonucleic Acid DNA is a nucleic acid that is the main constituent of the chromosomes of living cells, consisting of two(2) long chains of phosphate and sugar units twisted into a double helix and joined by hydrogen bonds. The sequence of the bonds determines individual heredity characteristics.
So I looked at the newspaper story and the American Heritage Desk Dictionary and I wondered! What did Kirk Meighoo read and write to obtain his doctorate? It must be political science. And he must have studied in a developed world environment where the race and class issues are not as pronounced in the politics as the UNC, the PNM and big business have engendered them here in Trinidad and Tobago. Meighoo must understand something about the political chemistry of this country and have an appreciation for applied socio-mathematical realities which the social scientists continue to overlook.
No twisting together of NAR-UNC cells or NAR-PNM genes would obliterate from ordinary peoples’ minds the big business trampling which we endured 1987-1991. No bonds of convenience will again come to fruition for the benefit of comprador capital against the best interest of workers and ordinary people. Our hydrogen will bond with our oxygen to water our own cultivation. There will be nothing new which did not include the workers and the mass movement of the people. The workers and the ordinary people in their organizations and groupings will not accept the organization and leadership of the old and bankrupt.
The workers and ordinary people in their Unions, community organizations and groupings must form the new living cells and be the main constituents of its chromosomes.
And the sequence of the bonds brought about by the consequential social and internal power relationships will determine the characteristics of a society at peace and dispensing equity and justice to all citizens.
Have a good evening and a peaceful and enjoyable weekend.
Love and protect the children and commit to Trinidad and Tobago.
I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks!
2006-03-13
Good Evening. Welcome to OWTU Speaks and to a new week which hopefully, will be more peaceful and enjoyable than the one past. Only on Friday – three (3) days ago – we were making the point that no third political force will emerge – dominated by the middle class failures of the old politics, dependant on big business-dollar-financing, exclusive of the organizations representative of workers and the poor – no third force identified by its doctor-politics leader alone, will emerge and be successful at the electoral politics determined by race and largess afforded by the national cash registers which are energized these days 24/7 by oil and gas.
As a matter of fact, as we speak, a predominant operator in the oil and gas business is today flowing a newly-drilled world class well – as a test of that operator’s wellness and great presence in the dance – as we speak, that well is estimated to be flowing at more than 80 mscfd with its choke adjusted at only 25% of capacity. Talk about dance, that well can be considered ‘a cannon in any ball’. Any that is only one of three world class items according to our information. But let’s not digress too far!
Only last Friday we were discussing the current discussions about the country needing something new, fresh, offering hope and dynamism for change- not exchange – not replicas of a moribund and discredited UNC nor a PNM bankrupt of ideas, nor a dead NAR which had only a mission to unite all to beat the PNM but no vision to build the country and develop all its people.
It is not surprising that the handful of parties now beginning to pervade our space are courting big business for election financing – sponsorship as it were. And they will then conglomerate and think themselves the third force with NAR heredity characteristics discovered by their DNA. So configured and organized with no philosophy other than a bland all-inclusive monotone, they will neither dislodge the PNM nor catspraddle the UNC for opposition space.
The necessary third force that the country needs and that will halt its precipi9tious slide to national strife and barbarism has to be built from the ground up – it will have no alternative but to combine all those running-fire community struggles and work place and unemployed issues, the distribution of resources and delivery of services, infrastructural development etc. And because of where it must begin, that third force may not necessarily be ready to run in the next elections but may well have some clout to influence it is some ways.
The third force, if it is to make the significant difference that everybody must want, will impact the middle ground of our more than 300k unlabelled nad uncommitted electors and attract the tens of thousands of ordinary used, confused, nowhere-else-to-turn and exploited members and supporters of the big business controlled and managed PNM and UNC.
It is not difficult to see the logic behind big business support and financing of political parties which will, in the final analysis, owe their electoral success to their financiers. Whom do you think, such a party in Government, would be committed to accommodate in the first case – except of course if it would risk being seen as an ingrate or more colloquially, neemakaram.
Have a safe and violence free evening Trinidad and Tobago.
Watch it on the nation’s roads
Respect and assist the elderly
Protect and mould the young
I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks!
2006-03-20
Good Evening and Welcome to OWTU Speaks!
The things that our politicians and leaders say and do sometimes would have the world believe that we have just come. It is amazing how deep is their folly and shallow, their understanding and knowledge. Many of us were taught that good manners, behaviour, training, deportment, bearing, demeanor and generally the matrix of one’s social cultivation – are the products of one’s upbringing. And the great majority of us were well taught and well brought-up.
We believe too, that those mentioned factors in our upbringing and social cultivation would have gone a long way in determining our ability to deal with issues of integrity and accountability and to help us become the trustworthy leaders upon whose ideas, hardwork, demonstrated ability and commitment, ethical society will be built. Put less sophisticatedly, we are saying that one had to be brought up in such environments as would have taught and demonstrated the values of honesty, hard work – or diligent work if you wish – commitment to worthwhile cause, justice and equity, if one is to possess and appreciation for integrity, accountability and moral uprightness – rectitude in a word – as contributory to bui8lding good leadership.
You do not pursue a course of study in ‘Integrity’ nor do you attend a tertiary institution to read for a degree in honesty. The Government’s retreat at Palo Seco last weekend and the one before therefore was wasteful, ill-advised, lacked serious and knowledgeable leadership and was intended to hoodwink and deceive.
It seems too many that an opportunity was created to award contracts to cronies and carpet baggers alike to participate in the feeding frenzy at the oil and gas rich public trough.
Dr. Theo Ferguson got a chance to make some not inconsiderable decent dollars teaching integrity and honesty to the Trinidad politician. The most popular of our polls suggested that that was like mission possible. Grenadians in Grenada express that Dr. Ferguson failed with deceased Eric Gairy and current Prime Minister Keith Mitchell. They remind us of the maxim which said that the teacher did not teach if the student did not learn.
And of course there are some teachers who will argue that it is impossible with students who have rocks in their heads. And our research revealed that Dr. Keith Mitchell studied statistics – not geology.
Local contractors whom it is claimed are stretched to capacity given our current construction boom made a killing (in 2 months) refurbishing nineteen (19) bungalows which were otherwise awaiting the demolishers’ sledge hammer. The true cost of all those works is still being evaluated although one pea brained PR official rushed to cover up with an $18 M story. But even so we are asked to believe that an average $1 M was spent repairing each of those three bedroom timber houses when it may have taken just about that sum to build completely new and better appointed concrete accommodation. The PR official is short. His number is woefully minor when the sixty-five new television sets and the $3 M draperies and hundreds of bed sheets are accounted for. And the putative political father comments that he has never been exposed in his long career to such deep leadership philosophy. Poor chap!
No doubt there were walkouts – or were they advances – from the retreat!
We examine a few more of what our politicians say on Wednesday
Have a good evening
I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks!
2006-03-24
Good Evening! The OWTU Speaks Welcomes your listening to our conversation on the sometimes foolish things that our politicians and leaders say.
On Monday last we drew attention to the awesome experience which Ministerio numero uno reported that he had during his retreat to the classroom to learn Integrity, Accountability and Leadership. On second thought now, we believe that that training course was necessary for him except that it should have been conducted earlier and that it should have included a session on ‘critical thinking and sensible articulation’.
The late Rt. Hon. Eric Williams was a master at the aforementioned subjects but he passed on regrettably without bequeathing the art and skill to his heirs and successors.
Had these two items – critical thinking and sensible speech been included in the training programme and treated with much earlier, one may have had the good sense to not make that recent unprovoked, wild and irresponsible statement about his reason for choosing Cuba instead of Mount Hope for his very delicate medical procedures. One backlash to the nonsense was the controversy in which some determined that a ‘Rose by anyother name was just as offensive as Chief of the Pierrot Grenades.
Another politician at some leadership level of sorts and who is very close to the ‘Bar’ seems not to have sufficiently imbibed the treaty which her Government signed – when they were in power to give effect to the CSME and the movement of people within the CSME. This politician is either confused by the contents of the CSME Protocols and the Representation of the People Ordinance or, in her enthusiasm to make a case against the ruling party’s penchant for manipulation of the electoral process, she drifted into a realm of indiscreet misrepresentation. Her lot does not have it and it seems, never had it. They must also need-desperately-exercises in practical Integrity, Accountability and Honest Leadership – if indeed these can be taught in a class room instead of being inculcated during one’s upbringing.
She was particularly expected to know and to do better – being from the Bar. But , it seems that to some of us the Bar is not the Bar which demands integrity, truth and sobriety in one’s judgement and representation of peoples’ interests in the national issues of the day.
Another one – this time not a politician but perhaps the new found friend of the one who is the politician’s best friend – this other one is reported to be intent on mashing up the place at Petrotrin. This one is not much of a Pierrot Grenade though, she seems more like preferring to portray a big black midnight robber drenched in molasses and with an orientation to the superstitious and macabre. She is ready to dismiss the majority of managers and senior employees at the Petoleum Company of Trinidad and Tobago Limited.
Her mission – she is reported to have said – is to manners the OWTU and remove all obstacles to the assault on workers benefits and their rights to decent work, decent pay, decent conditions, respect and recognition.
This gumbo glece’ contributed to the grounding of BWIA and poor performance at HCL – two jobs from which she was made to walk.
She will not succeed, cannot succeed against Petrotrin. She will not silence, she cannot quiet the OWTU. She has to go.
Walk away please go. Just walk away just go. The heat is on to save Petrotrin and protect our jobs. Stay tuned . Have a quiet weekend.
I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks!
2006-03-27
Good Evening and Welcome to OWTU Speaks!
The weekend was a terrible one for all of the nation’s God fearing and peace loving people. The madness seems to have gone beyond the society’s ability to contain and then repel it. Imagine seven (7) people killed in forty-eight (48) hours! – One hundred (100) murders in eighty-five (85) days? We seem to have truly transformed our once quiet, tranquil and equable national environment – outside of the Carnival of course into the restless killing fields of early 21st Century Trinidad and Tobago.
How have we come to this sorry conjuncture? The social scientists both the arm chair theoreticians and the entrepreneurial practitioners are about fame and fortune only. The Agencies which are commissioned to defend, protect and serve are quietly bewailing the extent to which they themselves have been infiltrated by the rotten eggs which the neglected families and a bankrupt Education System continue to breed. And as for the politicians – they have had their leadership and authority so compromised that they can only wish and some even ludicrously express that the problem will be solved by attrition as the gang members and bad boys eliminate themselves through a process of violent criminal elimination.
Such politicians as are only able to put plasters over the wounds and cracks in the society are without a sufficiently comprehensive understanding of what constitutes the country’s growth and development. The construction of high skyline edifices, Corporate headquarters and Government Campuses, affordable as they may be at this time will only suggest the fact that Government and business have come by significant cash windfalls realized by favourable international prices for those economic resources with which we are blessed and the diligent application of the workers engaged in the exploitation of those resources. That is all.
That by itself does not talk to the social deprivation to which so many are exposed. That by itself does not address the level of poverty – physical and psychological – suffered by too many in this oil and gas rich place.
There is growth no doubt but development has not taken place. The economy has grown but development is about people. Our large and enviable Foreign Reserves Balance ought not to be boasted about if there are hungry bellies going to sleep without shelter against the night. Zero unemployment in 2006 must also mean zero poverty and economic and social injustice in 2006 to have any real meaning.
Politicians without knowledge of or historical antecedents may not understand the fact that there was zero unemployment during slavery. And so today, if all the country’s unemployed and underemployed are engaged in activity which pay only subsistence wages in an economy realizing tremendous growth, then those in charge are really with stultified thinking and are bereft of any philosophy which is underpinned by growth and development of the people.
No classroom retreat on Integrity, Accountability and Leadership will imbue anyone with basic subscription to honesty, truth and politeness.
One either has it or does not have it.
Have a good evening.
I am Errol Mc Leod for OWTU Speaks.
2006-03-31
Good Evening and Welcome to OWTU Speaks!
The barbarism against which we have always warned is here and it is alive and well and kicking. We agree with Columnist Gillian Lucky that ‘only a vicious monster with no sense of conscience and little hope of redemption could have committed the heinous act that snuffed out the life of six-year-old Sean Luke.’ But that ‘vicious monster’ has been in incubation since the abandonment of conscience, good governance and responsible parenting in Trinidad and Tobago and is only now being unleashed as full blown blight and decadence on a hapless people. We are only now reaping the whirlwind of the cursed wind that we had sewn. We condemn it! We repudiate it! But we had warned against it. We saw it coming!
We saw it coming when centralized government planning was being abandoned for directions from external sources. We saw it coming when we thought that it had become necessary to advise against our being made to accept second best and sometimes the rejects from elsewhere.
Our rantings and raving, according to one spokesman of the Government at that time, were described as representing dark clouds which overhung the country.
We condemned our acceptance of foreign used tyres deemed to be unsafe by standards established in the countries of origin and shipped in containers which also facilitated the transportation of illicit drugs. Yes the devil was being accommodated since then and before that. We condemned the arbitrary and anti-worker, anti-poor people massive reduction in public spending on the social services including health and education. Today we are reaping the whirlwing of International Finance Capital’s prescriptions for adjustments preparatory to economic liberalization and globalization. Those prescriptions have assured today’s presence of too many socially displaced and maladjusted in developing economies.
All of these and more social and economic drawbacks notwithstanding, nothing less than the fullest application of the law against the barbarian monsters who have perpetrated those heinous acts which murdered the Chambers boy, the Andrews lad and now little Sean – must suffice.
The barbarism has gone beyond bud and must now be broken at the stem. The vile and crooked and profane must be stopped in their tracks. The obscenely well-to-don must be made to temper their run-away profligacy and Government must re-examine its unbalanced development thrust and bring better sense to improvement in social infrastructure and enhancement of the human person.
When bread, equity, justice and peace are denied and become the cry of the people, law and order would seldom be respected. And the fish begins to decompose from the head.
Let there be peace, justice and good order in the land.
Have a good weekend.
I am Errol Mc. Leod for OWTU Speaks!