Camille Clarke

Ri­car­do Phillip, for­mer news­pa­per ex­ec­u­tive, hopes for a break in the po­lit­i­cal are­na. Phillip is the po­lit­i­cal leader of new­ly-found­ed par­ty–Class Ac­tion Re­form Move­ment (CARM). It will be of­fi­cial­ly launched at Wood­ford Square, Port-of-Spain, to­mor­row at 1 pm. In a tele­phone in­ter­view last week, Phillips said CARM could be the sun­shine out of dark po­lit­i­cal clouds. Can Carm make a dif­fer­ence? "Cer­tain­ly... ab­solute­ly. I am launch­ing the par­ty now. I am at­tempt­ing to build cred­i­bil­i­ty be­cause peo­ple do not know my prin­ci­ples. "I want to take my time and build be­cause I doubt the Prime Min­is­ter (Patrick Man­ning) will be call­ing elec­tions now. I will be cam­paign­ing and cru­sad­ing in the mean­time," he said. Phillip said he would be ready in time for the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

"I want peo­ple to make the choice that we are good for them," he said. He said T&T has been ex­pe­ri­enc­ing a lead­er­ship cri­sis and the peo­ple have de­vel­oped a cyn­i­cal dis­trust for both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion. Phillip said the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal cli­mate had noth­ing new, ex­cept for un­holy al­liances, a false di­choto­my of eth­nic pol­i­tics and the ar­gu­ment of re­place­ment pol­i­tics. He added: "This un­ten­able at­mos­phere cre­ates the per­fect void for ex­treme re­li­gious and neo-pop­ulist ideas." Phillip said the PNM had al­lowed the cit­i­zens to op­er­ate in a state of law­less­ness for too long, "al­low­ing us to de­gen­er­ate in­to a bel­liger­ent and pu­gna­cious so­ci­ety. This pe­ri­od of the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion and the UNC op­po­si­tion is marked by a dark omen per­me­at­ing our so­ci­ety," he said.

Phillip said eth­nic pol­i­tics was de­stroy­ing T&T. "There are two main eth­ic groups in T&T. This has pro­vid­ed an eth­nic di­vide and our Con­sti­tu­tion does not pro­vide for eth­nic sep­a­ra­tion. "It be­longs to all cit­i­zens of this coun­try. Class pro­vides con­sti­tu­tion pro­tec­tion and guar­an­tees for its cit­i­zens," he said. Re­fer­ring to the num­ber of mem­bers in his par­ty, Phillip said: "I have re­fused to par­take in a mem­ber­ship dri­ve. I want­ed to launch the par­ty and then at­tract mem­bers." He said pri­or to launch­ing can­di­dates could have ul­te­ri­or mo­tives in join­ing the par­ty. "I want a fair process of mem­ber­ship. You have to se­lect peo­ple and it is dif­fi­cult to de­ter­mine their phi­los­o­phy," Phillip said. He said the mem­ber­ship dri­ve would be held af­ter the launch­ing.

Phillip said the door al­so was open to for­mer mem­bers of oth­er par­ties. He said: "It is open to every­body. I am not in­to buy­ing in­to pet­ty pol­i­tics. Pol­i­tics is about bring­ing choic­es to all peo­ple to solve all the prob­lems."

He said the coun­try's woes and crimes can­not be solved by the

Gov­ern­ment. "You can­not solve crime. The peo­ple can solve that, not the Gov­ern­ment. They are part of the process to solve the prob­lems," Phillip said.