Clevon Raphael

??Deputy po­lit­i­cal leader of Con­gress of the Peo­ple, Wendy Lee Yuen, is ex­treme­ly con­fi­dent the rul­ing Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment will come up against a unit­ed op­po­si­tion in the pend­ing snap gen­er­al elec­tion. She is al­so cer­tain the coali­tion agree­ment would en­sure that if the par­ty of par­ties should win, it would not col­lapse like the ill-fat­ed NAR ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Q: Mrs Lee Yuen, sure­ly you were mak­ing a joke when you made that as­ton­ish­ing state­ment last week?

A:(A puz­zled ex­pres­sion at the Val­sayn Lux­u­ry Spa in the Val­park Shop­ping Plaza last Thurs­day morn­ing): What state­ment?

That Con­gress of the Peo­ple may go it alone for the pend­ing gen­er­al elec­tion?

Lis­ten to me, Clevon. We are liv­ing in des­per­ate times, and our goal is not sim­ply to re­move the PNM. And while that is an im­per­a­tive, our goal is to give good gov­er­nance to all cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Have you been crit­i­cised, or have you heard crit­i­cisms af­ter that as­ser­tion?

Oh, yes! but you have to put it in the con­text in which it was said...

Which was?

The ques­tion was posed to me: "If the UNC does not wish to unite with the COP, what will you do?" And my re­sponse was: "Well, if we have to go it alone, we will con­tin­ue the fight."

Do you get the im­pres­sion that the UNC is not se­ri­ous about unit­ing the op­po­si­tion forces to fight the PNM?

Not at all. I think they, like the COP, are very se­ri­ous about res­cu­ing this coun­try from this cor­rupt and in­com­pe­tent ad­min­is­tra­tion. But you see, Clevon, pol­i­tics is a mind game...pol­i­tics and elec­tions are mind games, and there is a great fear that is mo­ti­vat­ing the peo­ple.

What fear?

The fear that the PNM may get back in, and this new move­ment that we are putting to­geth­er must gath­er wider sup­port, es­pe­cial­ly from among the un­de­cid­ed vot­ers, and tim­ing is crit­i­cal. And if you see the Prime Min­is­ter calls the date to­mor­row...how many weeks will we have, and every­body is go­ing to jump in­to elec­tion mode, hit­ting the cam­paign trail, and there­fore it will be even more im­per­a­tive for talks to be con­clud­ed very soon.

If the elec­tion date is an­nounced to­mor­row, would the op­po­si­tion par­ties be caught with their prover­bial pants down?

(Smiles) No. It will cre­ate a cat­a­lyst, be­cause we have been do­ing our home work; pro­duced doc­u­ments in terms of poli­cies, phi­los­o­phy, our val­ues, and our morals...where we want to take the coun­try. In the fi­nal analy­sis, the peo­ple must know what you say you are go­ing to do is in fact what you are go­ing to do.

Mrs Lee Yuen, do you agree that the fact both par­ties are screen­ing prospec­tive can­di­dates for all 41 seats is send­ing mixed sig­nals to the elec­torate?

Not at all. We feel we have some strong can­di­dates for cer­tain con­stituen­cies, and so too, the UNC would have the same. We will col­lab­o­rate and de­cide who would be the best can­di­dates for each con­stituen­cy. The in­ten­tion is not to com­pete so much as it is to get the best from each side. You know who is the strongest per­son to fight in a par­tic­u­lar seat.

Mrs Lee Yuen, what are you all do­ing to dis­pel the fear that if this coali­tion, or what­ev­er name the uni­ty process is called, should win the polls, it would not col­lapse like the NAR?

(Beam­ing con­fi­dent­ly) Well, we are de­vel­op­ing a pro­to­col for gov­er­nance, one that we are all sign­ing on to, which would al­most be like self-de­struc­tion for one to pull out af­ter­wards.

Why?

Be­cause you re­mem­ber the fa­mous one from ten leaves nought state­ment, with re­spect to the failed West In­dies Fed­er­a­tion?

It would be a mu­tu­al­ly-agreed po­si­tion which should de­flect some of the fear that the pop­u­la­tion has of it falling apart af­ter vic­to­ry at the polls. We all know the so­ci­ety was deeply hurt by the NAR ex­pe­ri­ence, and we don't want to fall in­to that trau­mat­ic sit­u­a­tion again.

The COP failed in its strat­e­gy of promis­ing the peo­ple bet­ter days and a high­er stan­dard of liv­ing in the 2007 elec­tion cam­paign. What makes you feel that you all would be suc­cess­ful this time around?

At that time, Clevon, we went alone, and this time we have the ad­di­tion­al ex­po­sure of large-scale cor­rup­tion in this gov­ern­ment, and there is some­thing that speaks to the good­ness in our peo­ple, which says cor­rup­tion is not tol­er­a­ble at all. Let us re­move that...So that cir­cum­stances are a lit­tle dif­fer­ent now, added to the fact that the coun­try is bank­rupt; the trea­sury is emp­ty, thanks to the reck­less spend­ing of the coun­try's pat­ri­mo­ny by Mr Man­ning and his bunch of in­com­pe­tents.

How do you know the trea­sury is emp­ty?

(Eyes open wide) But we al­ready had a deficit fi­nance bud­get; state en­ter­pris­es and spe­cial pur­pose com­pa­nies are rais­ing their own fi­nance, and we as a coun­try have to re­pay those debts. That isn't free mon­ey. It is all bor­rowed mon­ey to do those things, like build­ing eight hos­pi­tals and throw­ing $300 mil­lion in Laven­tille.

There is talk that Man­ning is call­ing a snap elec­tion be­cause he knows the coun­try is bank­rupt, and wants to throw the Op­po­si­tion in­side to take the heat and headache of re­build­ing the econ­o­my?

Yes, to fix Trinidad and To­ba­go; put it back on a growth path. And then he comes back to claim the cred­it...(Laughs aloud)

There is al­so this feel­ing that the PNM would stand a bet­ter chance of win­ning the polls if Mr Man­ning is not lead­ing the par­ty?

I think they stand a bet­ter chance, yes, and you know when you read the phi­los­o­phy of the PNM post-in­de­pen­dence, and if they had, in fact, fol­lowed that phi­los­o­phy, Trinidad and To­ba­go would have, ul­ti­mate­ly, been im­proved.

But what did they do? Some­where along the jour­ney, they found they had to keep some peo­ple down. So they cre­at­ed this vot­er bank filled with their own hard­core sup­port­ers whom they de­lib­er­ate­ly kept in men­tal bondage–the de­pen­den­cy syn­drome–to keep the par­ty in gov­ern­ment con­tin­u­ous­ly, then they lost their way.

Mrs Lee Yuen, an­oth­er fear is that, "Okay, if we re­move the PNM, what guar­an­tees that we would not suf­fer the same or even worse un­der a new dis­pen­sa­tion?" What are you all do­ing to deal with that re­al or imag­ined fear?

Well, COP is the move­ment of the mid­dle ground and if all...

Hold on. Do you mean mid­dle class peo­ple?

No. No. I am talk­ing about those who are kind of un­de­cid­ed about where their align­ment should go, and there are al­so peo­ple who share our views and prin­ci­ples and cer­tain­ly want to see good gov­er­nance, and what we should be do­ing to fix Trinidad and To­ba­go.

Mrs Lee Yuen, should the coali­tion win the poll, what would be the new gov­ern­ment's pri­or­i­ty?

Well, it would be out of place for me to an­swer that in any de­fin­i­tive way, but I would think at the top of the list is to re­as­sure the peo­ple they were right in choos­ing us to res­cue the coun­try from the PNM stran­gle­hold, and this could be done by im­ple­ment­ing the right poli­cies and pro­grammes.

Fi­nal­ly, what would you do if you should wake the morn­ing af­ter the polls and dis­cov­er the PNM still in of­fice)?

(Se­ri­ous coun­te­nance): God for­bid, but we will con­tin­ue the fight to lib­er­ate our coun­try from the PNM.