As we get past the anom­aly which is COVID-19, the flaws of the gov­ern­ment are again rear­ing its head. I saw COVID-19 as an anom­aly be­cause we all know some­thing like this does not hap­pen very of­ten. To the Gov­ern­ment’s cred­it, it did a pret­ty de­cent job in man­ag­ing this pan­dem­ic, al­though they tried to blind side the coun­try by award­ing a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar con­tract for com­mu­ni­ty pa­trols, the bla­tant dis­re­spect to the low­er in­come fam­i­lies, and the trav­es­ty which was the so­cial ser­vice grants.

Thank­ful­ly they had Dr Roshan Paras­ram and his team of med­ical ex­perts to make their ef­forts seem, as I said, pret­ty de­cent.

Pri­or to COVID-19, the Gov­ern­ment was col­laps­ing, as they failed to ful­fill sev­er­al of the promis­es it made to the peo­ple on the 2015 cam­paign trail. We had the failed at­tempt at lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, which they boast­ed about. We had Mar­lene-Gate, the Dar­ryl Smith sex­u­al ha­rass­ment mat­ter, the shut­down of Petrotrin, Ca­roni Green and sev­er­al oth­er com­pa­nies. They al­so bor­rowed mil­lions of dol­lars in loans for fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to re­pay. That’s just some of a host of con­tro­ver­sial is­sues.

COVID-19 then seem­ing­ly put the Gov­ern­ment in some pos­i­tive light. How­ev­er, be­fore it was over the flaws man­i­fest­ed again. Not just some­thing “small”, but is­sues which could have detri­men­tal im­pacts on this coun­try.

The vis­it of Venezue­lan Vice-Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­drigues to this coun­try. The coun­try was told the pur­pose of the vis­it was to dis­cuss the pan­dem­ic. Lat­er on we found out it was not from a pub­lic health per­spec­tive but from a na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty one. Sev­er­al ques­tions arose from this vis­it. First­ly, why was some­one who was sanc­tioned al­lowed to come here? This was in breach of the Rio Treaty as we now know.

The PM of this coun­try met with Ms Ro­driguez and a team, yet the team she came with was not in­tro­duced to ours. Over six peo­ple came but on­ly two or three were in the meet­ing.

What was the pur­pose of the them com­ing? How could our gov­ern­ment not know who was com­ing giv­en that the bor­ders were closed and ex­emp­tions were to be giv­en for their en­try.

Then, the plane which they came in was al­so sanc­tioned. And there were many more ques­tions which arose.

We are still wait­ing for an­swers on this.

There is now a “war of words” be­tween the Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty and the Unit­ed States Am­bas­sador to T&T.

It would seem as though Min­is­ter Stu­art Young at­tempt­ed to mis­lead the pop­u­la­tion by say­ing the am­bas­sador did not raise the is­sue with the breach of the Rio Treaty. That was lat­er dis­pelled.

Our in­ter­na­tion­al rep­u­ta­tion is tak­ing a hit and the gov­ern­ment con­tin­ues to be ig­no­rant, lie, and de­ceive the pub­lic.

There was al­so the sud­den res­ig­na­tion of Robert Le Hunte as Sen­a­tor and Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Util­i­ties. It’s be­ing said that this was as a re­sult of the re­struc­tur­ing of WASA but I be­lieve it was an at­tempt at dis­trac­tion from the oth­er is­sues. Here’s why:

The res­ig­na­tion of Robert Le Hunte as the Min­is­ter of Pub­lic util­i­ties is said to be as a re­sult of a dis­agree­ment he had with the Prime Min­is­ter on a $1.5 bil­lion pro­pos­al for the re­struc­tur­ing of WASA, more so the im­ple­men­ta­tion of a wa­ter me­ter for cit­i­zens.

This talk about wa­ter me­ter is not new to this coun­try. In 2016 it was re­port­ed that “WASA is aim­ing to be­gin me­ter­ing its cus­tomers in 2017. In in­tro­duc­ing the ini­tia­tive on a phased-ba­sis, the au­thor­i­ty’s chair­man, Rom­ney Thomas, be­lieves this can help gen­er­ate funds for the cash-strapped wa­ter com­pa­ny,” ac­cord­ing to a news­pa­per re­port.

Le Hunte came in­to the pic­ture in 2017 when the me­ter sys­tem was pro­posed to start. As we know, noth­ing has been done. So why? If it was a plan to be start­ed, did Le Hunte stop it then? And why get up­set over the is­sue now? I mean it was pro­posed to take place.

The tim­ing of this is­sue is al­so cause for con­cern. I’m sure the For­mer Min­is­ter un­der­stands the cur­rent eco­nom­ic prob­lems fac­ing the coun­try and that mon­ey could be put to bet­ter use.

Maybe it was a dis­trac­tion from the Stu­art Young is­sue or gov­ern­ment spend­ing dur­ing the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

The blame Kam­la song con­tin­ues to be sung by the PNM gov­ern­ment even af­ter al­most five years in of­fice. In its lat­est verse, the Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Franklin Khan is say­ing, the UNC is un­der­min­ing the coun­try when they raised the is­sue of the fu­el ship­ment to Aru­ba.

He said the nar­ra­tive by the Op­po­si­tion par­ty could have se­ri­ous con­se­quences for Paria’s trad­ing busi­ness, and, by ex­ten­sion, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s econ­o­my”. How, Min­is­ter, is the UNC do­ing this? By ask­ing ques­tions of on be­half of the pub­lic?

In case you may have for­got­ten, the Op­po­si­tion is sim­ply do­ing its job by rais­ing what they see as an is­sue which could have se­vere im­pact on the econ­o­my.

Oh, yes, you are the ones in charge. Not them!