Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says there must be a re­la­tion­ship be­tween busi­ness and pol­i­tics in or­der to bring about change in the coun­try. She was the guest speak­er at the Down­town Own­ers and Mer­chants As­so­ci­a­tion's (Do­ma) quar­ter­ly busi­ness meet­ing at the Jaf­fa Restau­rant, Queen's Park Oval, Port-of-Spain, on Tues­day. Per­sad-Bisses­sar was re­spond­ing to a state­ment by Do­ma pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud dur­ing his ad­dress.

Aboud said: "Madame Op­po­si­tion Leader we know that busi­ness and pol­i­tics do not mix. "To cer­ti­fy that point, we see re­peat­ed­ly that many of the re­la­tion­ships be­tween busi­ness­men and politi­cians are usu­al­ly qui­et ex­changes in which the par­ties do not wish it known that they are in­volved to­geth­er." Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the two en­ti­ties had to come to­geth­er to en­sure each oth­er's suc­cess. She said: "Busi­ness and pol­i­tics must mix be­cause the pol­i­tics must fa­cil­i­tate the busi­ness en­vi­ron­ment to make the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty suc­cess­ful. "And when the busi­ness com­mu­ni­ty is suc­cess­ful then the rest of the na­tion is suc­cess­ful."

The Op­po­si­tion Leader said while the two may not mix on par­ti­san ba­sis, "we must hold hands to walk this path­way now if we are to change the Gov­ern­ment's mod­el (of gov­er­nance) and if we are to res­cue our na­tion. "So I say busi­ness and pol­i­tics must mix or else we would not get out from the kind of sit­u­a­tion that you have de­scribed in terms of our gov­er­nance mod­el," she said. Guests in­clud­ed mem­bers of Do­ma and the busi­ness sec­tor, Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh and Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Mervyn As­sam, Ger­man and In­di­an High Com­mis­sion­ers, An­gela Per­sad, pres­i­dent of the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce, and oth­er rep­re­sen­ta­tives. Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so spoke briefly about is­sues such as gov­er­nance, the eco­nom­ic down­turn and is­sues af­fect­ing Do­ma.

She said there was a low lev­el of con­fi­dence in Gov­ern­ment's abil­i­ty to man­age the na­tion's re­sources es­pe­cial­ly when ef­forts were be­ing made in­ter­na­tion­al­ly to re­build pub­lic trust. She added: "How can any­one trust a gov­ern­ment that fails to col­lab­o­rate with its busi­ness sec­tor or to con­sult with in­ter­est groups or even con­duct prop­er re­search on large scale, mul­ti-bil­lion dol­lar projects such as the Rapid Rail? "How can any­one trust a gov­ern­ment that ig­nores its own lo­cal con­struc­tion sec­tor and labour force and ar­bi­trar­i­ly im­ports for­eign con­trac­tor and labour on projects de­fined by cor­rup­tion, de­sign flaws, qual­i­ty is­sues and cost over-runs; projects that were ill-con­ceived to be­gin with?" she ques­tioned.

More In­fo

Do­ma pres­i­dent Gre­go­ry Aboud yes­ter­day said the job of gov­er­nance need­ed analy­sis not on­ly from the busi­ness sec­tor but from every­one.

He said Caribbean peo­ple were suf­fer­ing from "a kind of po­lit­i­cal fa­tigue." Aboud said like oth­er Caribbean cit­i­zens, T&T was con­cerned about the per­sis­tent fail­ure in the de­liv­ery of ba­sic ser­vices to the peo­ple of the coun­try. Aboud said: "Busi­ness­men are prob­lem-solvers.

Our analy­sis is sim­ple. We pre­fer to think of the is­sues of gov­er­nance in our coun­try as is­sues of a man­age­ment mod­el that has failed over and over again." One na­tion­al fail­ure that was con­sis­tent was a dis­ap­point­ment, Aboud said. "But if it is a fail­ure that re­peats it­self ha­bit­u­al­ly across dif­fer­ent ad­min­is­tra­tions and across bor­ders and dif­fer­ent is­lands, then that is a re­gion­al tragedy." He said there was a to­tal ab­sence of mer­it and per­for­mance man­age­ment in the de­liv­ery of ser­vice to or­di­nary peo­ple. He said once politi­cians were put in pow­er their opin­ions "hard­ened like con­crete."