OWTU SPEAKS 2002 SEPTEMBER 30
“Copulate and Populate - $1,500 per picknie.”
My throat and vocal cords are much improved today. Last Friday they were horrible, but nothing could beat good old garlic, ginger, lime juice and honey. I am most thankful to my dear non-degreed doctor friends who brewed the medicinal concoction that brought me such tremendous relief.
There is so much to comment on today. I shall touch only on a few of them. So former Coast Guardsman, Richard Kelshall, is promised the National Security Portfolio after next week’s General Elections. And it seems that the poor ailing old marine is so tickled and over excited about the prospect of jumping from the buoy – that is buoy – at sea to the ship of state that he almost went overboard in his uncivil delivery yesterday. The Admiral should be aware though that he is only the fifth of the seven or so former Service Men who over the past three days were promised the Security Job and asked to appear and speak on the platform yesterday. It is only the gluttonous who is responding to the master fox’s call. One remembers 1977 when no fewer than 635 persons were promised a seat in the then 120 seat local government and municipal corporation bodies. Talk bout lie and scheming? The next shallow, hair brained and philosophically asinine promise comes with the comical but hegemonically serious theme - “Copulate and Populate - $1,500 per picknie.” Well you who know who will get ketch with that! Sorry to say – it is only those with a plan, primordially conceived and the lumpen gimme gimme hustlers who know not from where they came and who accept death at the setting of the sun. $1500 at the birth of each child? Is there a plan that they should die soon after? Where is the economic plan, the social, physical and spiritual infrastructure to ensure the orderly and well-rounded development of that child to maturity and death at old age? This is thing to steups!
I am surprised and disappointed and ready to lose the respect I held for Kamla and Dookeran. Have they helped to write that damn nonsense that the people were fed yesterday. Steups again man! They know how many oil and gas finds it will take to pay for all of them breakfastes that will be required to feed all them picknie that country Indian and lumpen Blackman – hungry as they already are, will begin to copulate to populate?
Like the UNC pulling teeth or what? What really is their para-dig-meh?
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OWTU SPEAKS 2002 SEPTEMBER 09
“We must intensify the struggle!”
We remember the General Elections of 1976. The campaign was hot. It was impactful and exciting and engaged the direct participation of almost all at every level of the national community. The issues were varied and many but were all of a socio economic nature and related to the development of the country at every stratum of society and affecting all the people. Crime was not a major agenda item but in so far as misconduct in public office, malfeasance and white collar infractions were concerned, we had had much to say as there were still fresh finger prints from O’Halloran’s and Prevatt’s fondling and pinching of the state’s financial and other resources. It embarrassed political giant and leader of the PNM and then Prime Minister Eric Williams to the extent that certain of his sycophants who were known to be not known to be straight or even bright were publicly identified by him as millstones. Then was when there still existed some modicum of decency and a subscription to some minimum accepted principles by those vying for public office and their leader. Then, there were contending Policies and Programmes which identified people first as the engine to propelling societies into modern development; the command and control, particularly over indigenous resources for the provision of physical and social infrastructure to facilitate said development.
And diversity was sees as a strength – an advantage as it were, not withstanding the political lunatic fringe that appealed to primordial instincts. Not so today. There is no subscription, and principles are absent. The villains – the crooks and varmints, political pimps and prostitutes, insulated in their robes of race and religion and having so far escaped official sanction and legal and lawful detention, insist on forcing themselves into our ordinary consciousness as decent men, decked in the frock of the priest and pundit.
As if to say ‘politics is the science and art of governing corruption’, they challenge – they dare the authorities to arrest and charge them. “We must intensify the struggle!” – they say. What struggle and for whom? When they had an opportunity – nay when they were given an opportunity to ameliorate the vicious circumstances affecting workers and the poor, what did they do? Not only did they gorge themselves at the public trough – a few million here, tens of thousands elsewhere, another ten million over there and fifty-two million somewhere else; not only did they vomit all over themselves in the process at the Red Parrot and the Waldorf – they also condemned and suppressed the legitimate struggles of those to whom they now appeal. ‘We must reclaim the country’ – they bellow. And we shall hear many attempts as justifying that call as we get closer to October 7.
But the leopard never changes its spots. In 1970, after the split in the ordinary workers’ and poor peoples’ party as we prefer to identify it now, the dividers and political charlatans in their opportunism, sought to fracture the OWTU as it battled against Texaco in the interest of the country then. THEY LOST.
These same dividers and political charlatans today are being represented by a handful of opportunists – the scraps of Twelve Delirious Men – most of them resembling gomboglece and shouting ‘Time for Change, Reclaim the Union’! Does that not sound like another call reported earlier? This motley gang of nondescript pioks and ragamuffins are being sponsored to affect the movement and direction of the OWTU and they see their miserable physiognomies only in cracked mirrors of deception. They will fail as others before them. They are not ready and perhaps never will – to fill the shoes of fearless, independent and progressive leadership of the Caribbean’s most visioned Trade Union. 1937 to 2002 – 65 and going strong.
Have a good evening; keep the Peace and check to make sure you are on the Voters List.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2002 SEPTEMBER 06
young achievers
There is still much hope for Trinidad and Tobago. The entire national community should be happy – we have been done proud by our young achievers – all of those who sat and passed the CXC and Cambridge A Level Examinations and particularly the 200 or so students who did so exceedingly well that they have been awarded scholarships. What a refreshing respite from all the revelations of corruption, the gory details of murder and other violent acts and news of our now growing popular past time – ‘Kidnapping for Bounty’. We have much to be thankful for. For a small place the size of Trinidad and Tobago to boast 200 national scholarship awardees, is achievement enough to warrant special recognition and national celebration. The OWTU salutes the thousands who sat these exams and congratulates especially our top performers – the 200 exemplars who won scholarships. The parents and the guardians too of all these model youngsters must be thanked for their sound contributions as good parents and guardians. Not to be left out are, of course, all those dedicated and hardworking but most times, badly treated teachers and school Principals without whom our children would not make the grade. It is perhaps appropriate here to condemn the obnoxious goon like and chauvinist behaviour of the ASJA Girls’ School Board and extend OWTU’s support for and solidarity with School Principal Farial Ali and the Trinidad and Tobago Unified Teachers’ Association
So the students, parents and teachers/principals have done very well and we therefore hold them all up in high esteem for that. As a successful parent myself, I know the proud and almost celestial feeling that engulfs one on an offspring’s notable achievements. My daughter – that is the one who attained the PhD in Mathematics recently – she phoned me just before I left home this morning. She felt a sense of nostalgia as she remembered those occasions – the start of a new school term on the first day at a new school or when it was exam time, I always accompanied her and reassured her of that parental solidarity, love and strength that so many children are denied today. This morning, this dear Doctor daughter of mine felt nervous about having to do her first lecture in the Department of Mathematics at Mt. Holy Oak, Massachusetts where she is contracted as an Assistant Professor of Mathematics. She called me for strength. It goes to show that among us here in Trinidad and Tobago and some temporarily abroad, there is real potential for excellence and a great well ordered society – but for the corrupt politicians and their miscreant agents of disorder, division and hate. But I am a Southerner too and I am basking in the knowledge that the South got the lion’s share of national scholarships this year.
This will serve as an even greater fillip for the OWTU’s new thrust in the provision of opportunities to Secondary and Tertiary Education. We are currently expanding our CLR James Educational Institute to include Science and Computer Labs and to provide full time tuition for A Level Courses and CXC Fifth Form Repeaters whilst continuing our now twelve year old programme of both A Level and CXC Part Time Evening classes.
Registration for all levels for the Academic Year 2002-2003 begins Monday 9th September – next week Monday AT 9.00 A.M.
There is more to the OWTU than just strikes! The struggles of 1937 to the present have brought us great rewards. Forward Ever, Backward Never!
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OWTU SPEAKS 2002 SEPTEMBER 04
Is the crisis of crime and morality ineluctable?
It is a long time since we talked about the barbarism about which we warned that Trinidad and Tobago was heading to. Up to a few years ago, there was hardly a speech delivered or a comment made by us on the state of the society and our national affairs, in which we did not warn about our seemingly precipitous descent into lawlessness and barbarism. I still think that we have not quite gone beyond redemption as unfathomable as our situation appears. And it is bad, it is terrible! Trinidad seems thirsting for blood. Hardly a day passes without somebody being gunned down, butchered or maimed.
There is a madness and a desperation for many guns and power. There seems little subscription to rationality anymore. There is and obscene impatience in our pursuit of even those objects which we could not legitimately claim, and we care little about who or how many are trampled or destroyed in those pursuits.
Our politics too is no longer the science and art of government; social and economic systems development; the moulding of a people and their cultures. No! It is today everything that fosters hate, promotes racist separation and drives the fetish for money, guns, office and power in any order.
What could reasonably have caused the bandits’ thirst to spill the blood and snuff out the life of security guard, Anthony Henry last Friday night?
What manner of ghoulish – perhaps – crazy hired hands would carry out such a brutal murder of Sandra Gomez to gain possession of her gun?
What organized madness is this, pervading a society that is at the same time disorganized by the politics of greed, race, corruption and infamy?
Are there connections running through all of these – the acquisition of guns; the discovery of drugs and bombs in vessels made to contain water; the spate of kidnappings and the unadvised payments of hefty ransoms, the revelations - almost on a daily basis now – of squandermania, overpayments, illegal loans and donations, malfeasance of one kind or the other at almost every state enterprise, statutory body and government institution? It is confusing – that’s true – but these situations like AIDS and Dengue are never made easy, are they? I think that the question now is: Is the crisis of crime and morality ineluctable?
And we seem bound, by design, to tolerate and in a strange way facilitate those who claim that they are innocent because nobody has been charged and locked up. It is interesting too that with all that has so far been alleged and exposed, one is brazen enough to move to frustrate further investigations into suspect overseas accounts.
We still feel that we have not yet receded into barbarism but we must deal with the barbaric quickly.
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OWTU SPEAKS 2002 SEPTEMBER 2ND
Transparency International
Transparency International is no doubt dealing on the periphery of the issues and not with a sufficiently deep sense of the depth of the corruption perpetrated against the people of Trinidad and Tobago over the past few years. It is certain that had the present government been not so afraid, slow and clumsy; had the wrong doing by officials not been masked by the perpetrators’ subscription to party, race and in some cases religion – and allegations of persecution of such party, race and religion – it is any body’s guess as to the ranking that this country would be given by Transparency International.
Just listen to what is being said before the Commission of Enquiry into the Airport Expansion Project, read the information coming out of the Auditor General’s reports on TIDCO, the National Lotteries Control Board, the Eastern Regional Health Authority, and the many other Statutory Authorities and Government Agencies that have been examined in recent months. Add to that list the many allegations with regard to Soldado, the earlier Rice and Bicycle deal, Whitehall renovation, Inncogen, NP Gas Stations, Miss Universe Beauty Pageant and the former IDC Pension Plan wind-up and others which do not now readily come to mind.
And one now well-known response is that from an immediate past Prime Minister who insists that his government has been absolved from any crimes of corruption since the present Government has been unable to lock up any of his Ministers for corruption.
This can quite easily be seen in our view, as a case of why crook taking advantage of the blind and immoral and primordial support of minions and the obvious bungling of an obvious and equally office hungry mook.
And these are the choices with which the T & T electorate is presented for October 7th. It is a very sad state of affairs which only the people can begin to resolve – decent, conscious people we mean, those who are not blinded by race and unrighteousness but guided by morality, equity and the principle of good governance.