Yvonne Webb

In what is be­ing viewed as a sting­ing at­tack against the Gov­ern­ment, Am­bas­sador Makan­dal Daa­ga, leader of the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee (NJAC), one of the coali­tion part­ners, crit­i­cised per­ceived cor­rup­tion in the coun­try.Daa­ga made his state­ments at the Found­ing Con­gress of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), an­oth­er coali­tion part­ner, at Palms Club, San Fer­nan­do, on Sat­ur­day evening.In his bit­ing com­men­tary, made be­fore an au­di­ence which in­clud­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tives of all coali­tion part­ners, in­clud­ing TOP's Ash­worth Jack, MSJ's Er­rol McLeod, UNC's Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and COP's Win­ston Dook­er­an, Daa­ga de­clared: "In my 50-60 years, I have nev­er heard so much cor­rup­tion in my land as in the last few days."There is too much cor­rup­tion and peo­ple are steal­ing mon­ey as though they in­vent­ed it," he said."It seems al­most as though the rich have tak­en a vow to thief, thief, thief," he shout­ed, evok­ing loud ap­plause from the au­di­ence.Daa­ga re­called for­mer PNM min­is­ter Desmond Carthy's now in­fa­mous state­ment, "All ah we thief" to il­lus­trate his point that politi­cians were cor­rupt and asked to be ex­clud­ed from that group.

Daa­ga ex­pressed sup­port for the work­ing class and iden­ti­fied with their strug­gles. He said he sup­port­ed the prin­ci­ple, that in a coun­try like Trinidad and To­ba­go where there was wealth, it should be shared equal­ly among every­one.To this end, he said, those who were say­ing five per cent or eight per cent (with ref­er­ence to ne­go­ti­a­tions with the CPO) was too much, should pay work­ers."That is their right," Daa­ga con­tend­ed.He said the UNC and the COP could not tell work­ers they had no right to do what they were do­ing.How­ev­er, more than once dur­ing his ad­dress, he point­ed out: "I am not against my par­ty."Daa­ga said his­to­ry had made it clear that all the con­sti­tu­tion­al, po­lit­i­cal and eco­nom­ic ad­vances this coun­try had made were due to the strug­gles of the work­ing peo­ple.

He said from way back, the "es­tab­lish­ment" had al­ways been an­gered by the fact that any­one in labour should hold the reign."The es­tab­lish­ment has not change...It has mere­ly re­placed one for the oth­er," he said­Daa­ga re­it­er­at­ed his pre-elec­tion plat­form po­si­tion that un­less the peo­ple recog­nised they were the Gov­ern­ment, they would al­ways be march­ing up and down, fight­ing for ben­e­fits.Many times dur­ing Daa­ga's ad­dress, Dook­er­an looked un­com­fort­able.It was not the on­ly time Dook­er­an, the on­ly one wear­ing a suit, ap­peared to be ill at ease, as he sat through more than an hour of an­ti-cap­i­tal­ist sen­ti­ments from the OW­TU and MSJ's so­cial­ist part­ners from across the Caribbean, Latin, South, Cen­tral and North Amer­i­ca.When his turn came to ad­dress the au­di­ence, Dook­er­an de­fend­ed the Gov­ern­ment's fis­cal mea­sures.