Ak­ile Si­mon

Pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions (Fi­tun) David Ab­du­lah is warn­ing that the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) will soon be kicked out of of­fice, af­ter Fri­day's con­fronta­tion out­side the Red House, in­volv­ing pro­test­ers and po­lice. Ab­du­lah was re­leased, ear­li­er, on $500 bail af­ter he was ar­rest­ed and charged by po­lice with ob­struct­ing the free pas­sage­way. He is ex­pect­ed to ap­pear be­fore a Port-of-Spain mag­is­trate in the morn­ing, to an­swer the charge. But, ad­dress­ing scores of union mem­bers at Wood­ford Square, late on Fri­day, Ab­du­lah said it was the sec­ond time he had been ar­rest­ed dur­ing a protest demon­stra­tion, un­der a PNM Gov­ern­ment. He al­leged the PNM was util­is­ing the long arm of the state to phys­i­cal­ly abuse and in­tim­i­date pro­test­ers.

He al­so ac­cused the me­dia of "help­ing to cre­ate a cli­mate of in­tim­i­da­tion and fear." The last time I was ar­rest­ed was March 4, 1986, out­side the Oval, while pick­et­ing against Eng­lish crick­eters, who had gone to play in South Africa. The po­lice came and bru­talised peo­ple in the worst pos­si­ble way."

"A Gov­ern­ment fell–not too long af­ter that... A gov­ern­ment was changed. "I tell you to­day (Fri­day) they (Gov­ern­ment) will pay the po­lit­i­cal price if they went ahead with pass­ing such (Prop­er­ty Tax) leg­is­la­tion." He called on the pub­lic to be com­mit­ted and con­scious and to take a stand for free­dom, jus­tice, eq­ui­ty, peace and sus­tain­able liveli­hoods. Ab­du­lah al­so gave an ul­ti­ma­tum to the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion to re­spond to de­mands the union made last month.

Mean­while, Pres­i­dent of Oil­field Work­ers Trade Union (OW­TU) An­cil Ro­get promised sim­i­lar protest ac­tion in the fu­ture. He said: "We will con­front state ma­chin­ery, state ar­tillery, guns and more guns, sim­ply be­cause we know what we are about is true, just, cor­rect, and in the in­ter­est of the peo­ple of T&T." He said what tran­spired on Fri­day was ex­pect­ed, and warned of worse to come. "They are in for a rude awak­en­ing. We must not for­get what hap­pened here to­day, and who was re­spon­si­ble for it–not the po­lice, but the Gov­ern­ment." Head of One Ac­cord Lin­coln May­ers said whether or not the prop­er­ty tax amend­ments were passed in Par­lia­ment, the re­al bat­tle had be­gun.