Richard Lord

Plan­ning and the Econ­o­my Min­is­ter Dr Bhoen­dra­datt Tewarie says Trinidad and To­ba­go is be­ing pre­vent­ed from ad­vanc­ing be­cause of pol­i­tics.He was mak­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to yes­ter­day's Sen­ate de­bate on a Gov­ern­ment mo­tion to in­crease wa­ter rates to com­pa­nies on the Point Lisas In­dus­tri­al Es­tate. The new rate is to be in­tro­duced next month.

Tewarie said the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment was elect­ed for a five-year term and should be al­lowed to serve its full term. How­ev­er, he said, the Op­po­si­tion was us­ing al­most every na­tion­al is­sue as a means to de­stroy the Gov­ern­ment.He said he was par­tic­u­lar­ly con­cerned about Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds' use of a news­pa­per ar­ti­cle to at­tack the Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day.

"We cre­ate the con­di­tions in which, when one Gov­ern­ment comes in­to of­fice, we will make sure that it achieves noth­ing or make sure that we help it to fall be­fore the five years, or make sure that we make gov­er­nance im­pos­si­ble," the min­is­ter said.He added: "And then, when the next Gov­ern­ment comes in­to pow­er, we spend the oth­er five years do­ing the same thing. The end re­sult of that is ze­ro."

Af­ter a short pause, Tewarie said those re­marks were prob­a­bly said "in­ap­pro­pri­ate­ly be­cause of the na­ture of the doc­u­ment (mo­tion) be­fore us for de­bate to­day. "But I say it be­cause of the man­ner I saw Sen­a­tor Hinds use the ar­ti­cle in the news­pa­pers and be­cause of my own knowl­edge of what hap­pens in this coun­try."

Tewarie said at a more ap­pro­pri­ate oc­ca­sion he may elab­o­rate on that is­sues "be­cause I have learnt from the state of emer­gency and the things I have seen, that this coun­try is not some­times what it seems."Tewarie said the cul­ture of a na­tion "is af­fect­ed by the way its lead­ers cre­ate the con­ver­sa­tion in the pub­lic space."He added: "This kind of thing wor­ries me. It wor­ried me when the state of emer­gency came up as an is­sue and the man­ner in which that was dealt with.

"Two years from now when you look at the facts you will see that a lot of it (at­tacks by the Op­po­si­tion) was alarmist and un­nec­es­sary. "It wor­ried me when the state of emer­gency came to an end and peo­ple were mak­ing var­i­ous state­ments of a cer­tain kind and in two years' time you will re­alise it was all huff-and-puff."He said every is­sue in T&T cre­at­ed con­di­tions for in­tense, un­nec­es­sary, po­lit­i­cal­ly ex­pe­di­ent ac­cu­sa­tions that "lead us nowhere as a coun­try."

Tewarie said T&T was fac­ing many se­ri­ous chal­lenges. "The chal­lenges are go­ing to be­come fiercer in the com­ing years. This very wa­ter that we are talk­ing about is go­ing to be a ma­jor chal­lenge in Trinidad and To­ba­go," he added.He point­ed out that Bermu­da, which could fit in To­ba­go five times, had a per capi­ta in­come of $60,000. "A coun­try like the Cay­man Is­lands, which is hard­ly a piece of land on the wa­ter, has a per capi­ta in­come of near­ly US$55,000."

Tewarie added: "Trinidad and To­ba­go must get to the point where it can make a quan­tum leap in per capi­ta in­come terms; al­so in terms of eq­ui­ty and spread and de­vel­op­ment strat­e­gy that al­lows the whole coun­try to ben­e­fit out of the de­vel­op­ment process."He said a lot of things which hap­pened in T&T must be made vis­i­ble so the pop­u­la­tion would have a bet­ter un­der­stand­ing of things.

The min­is­ter said part of "our re­spon­si­bil­i­ty as lead­ers is to help them to see more clear­ly, not to cre­ate the con­di­tions for more clouds, more neb­u­lous­ness, more lack of dis­cern­ment, more un­cer­tain­ty about what is true and what is not."He said the lead­ers of T&T owed cit­i­zens "more than any­thing else is, at least, a dis­po­si­tion to clar­i­ty."