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Our changes of government frequently receive a verdict of “no change only exchange”. The current apparent dead end in the search for a gas supply to revive certain of our petrochemical industries is illustrative of the peril of governments having no appetite for fundamental reform.
Added to all the unimaginative attempts at diversification of the economy, the recently voted out Dr Keith Rowley/Stuart Young-led People’s National Movement (PNM) government and its satellites enjoyed the status quo with borrowed money and at our expense.
(Photo: OPM.)
With the simpering support of some elements in the private sector, in the face of hostility between the US and Venezuela and US sanctions against Venezuela, they clung in an almost maniacal manner to the belief that we would obtain the necessary gas supply from neighbouring Venezuela.
Sadly, the PNM’s delusions about Venezuela led the newly elected United National Congress (UNC) Government, hopeful of an alternative gas supply from Guyana, into a firm rebuff last week from Guyana vice-president Bharath Jagdeo, who stated that Guyana’s gas was to be used for Guyanese projects.
Among the leading subjects of this column regarding unaddressed problems have been our porous borders, the deficient examination of what passes through our legal ports and the uncritical maintenance of the state enterprise system, which is a questionable source of juicy contracts and wasteful expenditure.
The status quo regarding the Chief Justice is also troubling given the two substantial losses before the Privy Council (PC) suffered by the Chief Justice and the Judicial and Legal Service Commission, (the JLSC), which the CJ chairs.
Between November 2017 and January 2018 there were media reports making allegations against the CJ.
The CJ failed in his attempt to obtain an injunction to prevent the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago (LATT) from proceeding with its proposed inquiry into whether to make a request of the PM to act under section 137 of the Constitution and advise the President of the Republic to initiate a formal inquiry into the CJ’s conduct.
(Copyright Office of the President.)
After the CJ lost in the PC, the matter ended when the then Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley announced that he would not accede to any such request of LATT.
More recently, in dealing with the fiasco of the appointment of Marcia Ayers-Caesar as a High Court judge, the PC found that it was no part of the JLSC’s role (nor the role of the Chief Justice), to seek to procure the removal of the judge by other means, such as resignation.
The PC held that Ayers-Caesar had been unlawfully pressured to resign in circumvention of the constitutional safeguards laid down in section 137.
Can we be comfortable with nothing coming out of the Ayers-Caesar findings?
I raise this matter stimulated by my disappointment that LATT may have unwisely opened itself to claims that it was not evenly holding the balance concerning proper conduct.
LATT issued a heavy-handed media release rebuking Israel Khan SC for his theatrical, well-publicised protest in support of his call for the CJ to be investigated—when he used a hammer to smash a framed picture of the CJ, in his own property and in his private office.
Photo: Ministry of Education.
Also high on my list is the failure to deal with the huge negatives of the Secondary Entrance Assessment (SEA).
Many children who do not pass the examination with marks that entitle them to be placed in the “better” schools become vulnerable to immersion in gang and gun violence, as lack of equal opportunity and frustration eats away at them.
Related to the failure to reform the education system is the indifference to investment in the panyards as places of learning and nurture.
Photo: Pan Trinbago.
It matters not to me when my phrase panyard model is used without attribution, either to me or the late Lloyd Best, or there is no acknowledgment that the successful separation of the medium and big band Panorama finals followed my advocacy for “prime bands in prime time”.
I now look forward to the new Minister of Culture exploring with her Cabinet colleagues what the pan manufacturing sector can contribute to the diversification of the economy.
Will the UNC Government avoid a verdict of “only exchange”? Can it find the necessary self-restraint so that rationality and not bitter partisanship guides reform?
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Martin G Daly SC is a prominent attorney-at-law. He is a former Independent Senator and past president of the Law Association of Trinidad and Tobago.
He is chairman of the Pat Bishop Foundation and a steelpan music enthusiast.
Daly still with this pan yard nonsense? Age bringing dotage?