Richard Lord

The Move­ment for Jus­tice (MSJ) is ex­pect­ed to with­draw from the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship very soon. The clear­est hint of the MSJ's with­draw­al was giv­en dur­ing a news con­fer­ence, called by the Joint Trade Union Move­ment at the Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers Union Hall, Hen­ry Street, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. Asked about the com­plete with­draw­al of the MSJ from the PP Gov­ern­ment, pres­i­dent gen­er­al of the Oil­fields Work­ers' Trade Union (OW­TU) An­cel Ro­get said: "Pa­tience, pa­tience, pa­tience. Rest as­sured, pa­tience...and you shouldn't have to wait too long again. Pa­tience." The mat­ter is ex­pect­ed to come up on the plat­form at Char­lie King Junc­tion, Fyz­abad, on Labour Day next week Thurs­day. Ro­get al­so said the pos­si­bil­i­ty of a na­tion­al strike should not be ruled out. He said he would nev­er for­get the Gov­ern­ment for call­ing a state of emer­gency as the work­ers were mo­bil­is­ing for a na­tion­al strike. He said the labour move­ment no longer sup­port­ed the PP coali­tion.

The coali­tion was es­tab­lished in April 2010 when the Fyz­abad Ac­cord was signed at Char­lie King Junc­tion. The MSJ draws its mem­bers from the labour move­ment. It is one of the five par­ties which make up the PP Gov­ern­ment. The oth­er mem­ber units are the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, the Con­gress of the Peo­ple, the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple and the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee. On May 23, MSJ po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment pub­licly, say­ing it had not done enough to stamp out cor­rup­tion in state en­ter­pris­es. Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said a day lat­er that Ab­du­lah would re­main with the PP, as she was not about to re­voke his sen­a­to­r­i­al ap­point­ment. But Ro­get said yes­ter­day:"We want to say cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly that this PP Gov­ern­ment does not have the sup­port of the labour move­ment." He said "sig­nif­i­cant an­nounce­ments" would be made at the Labour Day ral­ly at Char­lie King Junc­tion in one week's time. The theme of the event is "On­ly Work­ers' Ac­tion Would Save Our Na­tion."

Ro­get said leader of the High­way Re-route Move­ment Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh was sup­port­ed by Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er when he cam­paigned against the smelter project un­der the for­mer PNM Gov­ern­ment. Ro­get said now Warn­er was crit­i­cal of Kublals­ingh for seek­ing to have a por­tion of the high­way to Point Fortin rerout­ed. "We are go­ing to make some sig­nif­i­cant an­nounce­ments as to what is go­ing to hap­pen next as we move for­ward," Ro­get added. He added: "There is a con­cert­ed at­tempt to si­lence any dis­sent­ing voice in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Any­one who speaks out against the Gov­ern­ment is iden­ti­fied as a trou­ble­mak­er. We fear none and we will not bow. "We will be tak­ing very strong po­si­tion against this Gov­ern­ment's ant-de­mo­c­ra­t­ic ap­proach to sti­fle and muz­zle the me­dia and trade union voic­es." He al­so said the PP Gov­ern­ment bought out a "PNM eat-a-food ca­lyp­son­ian." That was an an ob­vi­ous ref­er­ence to Sug­ar Aloes, who sang the Tar­rus Ri­ley com­po­si­tion She's Roy­al for Per­sad-Bisses­sar at two ral­lies in re­cent weeks.