Clevon Raphael

Colm Im­bert's eth­nic­i­ty and mid­dle-class back­ground make him a nat­ur­al tar­get for peo­ple to dis­like him. The for­mer min­is­ter of works in the last PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, which was trounced by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship in the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion, says he was strong­ly op­posed to the con­tro­ver­sial prop­er­ty tax pro­posed by the Man­ning regime.

Q: Mr Im­bert where shall we start, the pre­car­i­ous state of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment or the equal­ly dis­turb­ing flood­ing sit­u­a­tion in Trinidad?

A: (Smil­ing): Wher­ev­er you want, it is your in­ter­view.

Ok. What is wrong with the PNM?

(Lean­ing for­ward seat­ed at his desk in his con­stituen­cy of­fice in Mar­aval on Tues­day af­ter­noon). Clear­ly, the PNM lost touch with the pop­u­la­tion and some of these re­sults (in the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion), for ex­am­ple, in D'Abadie/O'Meara and Ari­ma, the then op­po­si­tion was able to wipe out the ma­jori­ties en­joyed by the PNM to win those seats, in one case by a mere 300 votes...

Have you been able to as­sess your­self, what went wrong?

(A deep breath) Ob­vi­ous­ly, the peo­ple were not hap­py and were not sat­is­fied with the PNM gov­ern­ment.

What was their main griev­ance or griev­ances?

I'll tell you what I had been told, ok? I have been told that there was an an­ti-Man­ning sen­ti­ment, that there was a prob­lem with the Calder Hart...

Was that a jus­ti­fi­able anger among the elec­torate?

It is dif­fi­cult for me to say it was jus­ti­fi­able and that peo­ple were against Mr Man­ning.

Why is it so dif­fi­cult for you to say the peo­ple were jus­ti­fied giv­en the wide­spread dis­con­tent­ment over Mr Man­ning?

Be­cause I was prob­a­bly too close...you know when you are too close to some­thing it is dif­fi­cult to see it. Re­mem­ber, I was in the Cab­i­net and I would see the good things the PNM was do­ing such as free ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion, free med­ica­tion...

Now that you have had the op­por­tu­ni­ty to take a ret­ro­spec­tive look, were you wrong to have gone along blind­ly sup­port­ing the pro­grammes Mr Man­ning was pur­su­ing?

(A swift re­tort) I didn't go along blind­ly at all; first­ly I was one of the great­est crit­ics for ex­am­ple (check­ing on his fin­gers)... the prop­er­ty tax. I was un­hap­py about that.

But you nev­er pub­licly stat­ed your ob­jec­tion?

No. You see I was part of a group, you have col­lec­tive re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and you would ar­gue things out in a par­tic­u­lar...

Again, with the ben­e­fit of hind­sight, did you think it would have been bet­ter to have put coun­try first in­stead of pur­su­ing the goal of win­ning the gen­er­al elec­tion?

It wasn't re­al­ly a ques­tion of win­ning an elec­tion. I felt if I had come out at that time I would have desta­bilised the gov­ern­ment of which I was a part.

Blind loy­al­ty?

No. I just felt it would have been wrong to have done that hav­ing sub­ject­ed my­self to the rule of the ma­jor­i­ty.

In that con­text you must agree then that Dr Row­ley was wrong to do what he was do­ing?

(Em­phat­i­cal­ly) Of course he was wrong to do what he did, every­body knows that.

You will agree that the Calder Hart/Ude­cott mat­ter was a piv­otal fac­tor in the demise of the PNM at the polls?

(Voice low­ered) It was a dev­as­tat­ing blow. That's a fact but...

Have you for­giv­en him even though you do not feel PNM lost the elec­tion be­cause he was crit­i­cis­ing Man­ning?

(Wry smile) I don't think the ques­tion of for­give­ness was in­volved, but I was con­cerned about the things he was say­ing...

The things he was say­ing or how he was say­ing them?

How he was say­ing them...you are quite right. But I would not be hon­est if I did not say the PNM was in trou­ble, and my dif­fi­cul­ty is to es­tab­lish why.

Ex­act­ly when did you come to that re­al­i­sa­tion?

The elec­tion re­sults.

Wasn't Man­ning con­cen­trat­ing on mega projects to the detri­ment of those sim­ple things that would have made life eas­i­er for the av­er­age cit­i­zen?

As I told you, it was ob­vi­ous that we had lost touch with the pop­u­la­tion...but I don't think his (Row­ley's) pub­lic ut­ter­ances were the on­ly rea­son for the de­feat. Clear­ly, there was some­thing much big­ger than that. I found he was a lit­tle over board and I would not be hon­est if I did not say the PNM was in trou­ble, and my dif­fi­cul­ty is to es­tab­lish why. And nor­mal­ly a gov­ern­ment is un­pop­u­lar in its mid-term....

But you must ad­mit that that dis­en­chant­ment be­gan long be­fore Man­ning's mid-term?

(In­ter­rupt­ing a lit­tle im­pa­tient­ly) I am com­ing to that, I will come to that. And nor­mal­ly the gov­ern­ment would spend the first two years ini­ti­at­ing pro­grammes that might prove to be un­pop­u­lar. The next three years would be spent re­cov­er­ing from that, and re­pair­ing any dam­age that might have been done...mak­ing peace with the pop­u­la­tion.

What is it that you might have gleaned from this par­tic­u­lar mid-term sur­prise?

I have re­alised that you could spend all your time in­side of a min­istry work­ing hard de­liv­er­ing pro­grammes, do­ing things you con­sid­er im­por­tant for the coun­try and lose sight of the fact that you may not be ser­vic­ing the ba­sic re­quire­ments of cit­i­zens.

Is that where the PNM went wrong?

(Slight­ly more im­pa­tient) I am com­ing to that...

Mr Im­bert you could an­swer this one be­cause you are not in gov­ern­ment at this time; a truth­ful, hon­est an­swer. Is it a fact, Mr Im­bert, that Man­ning nev­er lis­tened to any­one?

Is this in­ter­view about Mr Man­ning or about me, Clevon? (Chuck­ling) That is lit­tle sleight of hand you pulled on me there. Let's talk about me (laugh­ter). You said you want­ed to in­ter­view me, you did not tell me you want­ed speak about Mr Man­ning.

Very well. The PNM has lost the two na­tion­al elec­tions, what is the way for­ward?

Ob­vi­ous­ly we lost touch with not just the base of the so­ci­ety; we clear­ly lost touch with the mid­dle class, okay? So we lost touch with the work­ing class...There is no oth­er ex­pla­na­tion for the num­ber of votes that the PP coali­tion got be­cause they got 100,000 more votes in this elec­tion than they got in 2007. Where did those 100,000 vot­ers come from? (a be­wil­dered coun­te­nance). Clear­ly these peo­ple nev­er vot­ed be­fore and de­cid­ed to vote this time around, and were mo­ti­vat­ed to vote against the PNM which the UNC ben­e­fit­ted from.

How does the par­ty go for­ward?

The first thing we have to do is recog­nise we were not ser­vic­ing the needs of the pop­u­la­tion and then get back to the ba­sics, down to the ground. We have to start lis­ten­ing to the peo­ple and once we have a bet­ter re­la­tion­ship with the pop­u­la­tion, then I think it would be fair­ly easy for the PNM to re­turn to... "

Is Dr Row­ley the man to lead the re­cov­ery of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment?

Once he is will­ing to lis­ten and to ac­cept crit­i­cism...

Is he?

I have seen some signs re­cent­ly...have seen a few signs re­cent­ly...

The news­pa­per re­port­ed last week that he took note of what you said about the par­ty, isn't that a con­tin­u­a­tion of the PNM dic­tum that you should not wash your dirty linen in pub­lic?

(Smirk­ing) You don't think that is a lit­tle para­dox­i­cal for some­body like Dr Row­ley who washed his linen for two years to be com­plain­ing about oth­er peo­ple wash­ing their linen? He was most vo­cif­er­ous in the pub­lic do­main–in­side and out­side of the Par­lia­ment, on the ra­dio, in the news­pa­pers, on tele­vi­sion crit­i­cis­ing Mr Man­ning, crit­i­cis­ing the PNM gov­ern­ment of which he was a part.

Dr Row­ley said the par­ty had to re­or­gan­ise it­self fol­low­ing its over­whelm­ing de­feat, do you think part of this re­con­struc­tion should in­clude in­tro­duc­tion of one-man-one-vote in the par­ty al la the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress?

(A brief con­tem­pla­tive mode): Yes. I don't like the del­e­gate sys­tem be­cause I think it can be ma­nip­u­lat­ed, and I hope that dur­ing his five-year term that would be one of the changes he might wish to make.

Mr Im­bert you have presided over the flood­ing of this coun­try as it were for a num­ber of years in your ca­pac­i­ty as Min­is­ter of Works. Do you think the PNM must take some blame for this un­ten­able sit­u­a­tion?

I will re­spond this way, you would not see me blam­ing Jack Warn­er to­day, and the prob­lem with the flood­ing in this coun­try is that it strad­dles too many in­ter­est groups in the coun­try. We took a de­ci­sion to bring all these dis­parate groups un­der one roof to deal in a com­pre­hen­sive man­ner with this sit­u­a­tion which was part of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form process.

How long ago this was done and ex­act­ly what was be­ing at­tempt­ed?

With­in the last year and it was the in­ten­tion to ap­point a sin­gle en­force­ment agency be­cause right now most of the en­force­ment has to be done by the re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. We were set to bring that sin­gle agency in­to fruition but the elec­tion...

Mr Im­bert you were al­ways un­der some kind of me­dia scruti­ny–you dash­ing off let­ters to the ed­i­tors. Why is it that peo­ple loved to hate you?

(A broad smile) Well, I think there are a lot of peo­ple who love me too, but there are quite a few who do not like me. That's a fact (sober ex­pres­sion), and I would say it is so be­cause I am a nat­ur­al tar­get.

Why is that?

Be­cause look at me (point­ing to his out­stretched hand) look at my com­plex­ion, look at my class back­ground, I came from a uni­ver­si­ty back­ground. (Paus­ing) Peo­ple do not nat­u­ral­ly as­so­ciate some­body with my back­ground as be­ing in the PNM.

You have been in the PNM for more than 20 years, the elec­torate has re­turned you all this time, how could you make that kind of....

(Quick­ly in­ter­rupt­ing again) Be­cause I know...but, I want to make it quite clear that I have nev­er been a tar­get by PNM peo­ple. PNM sup­port­ers have em­braced me. I am a nat­ur­al tar­get by peo­ple op­posed to the PNM–the ONR, the NAR, the UNC, the COP, mid­dle class peo­ple. A nat­u­ral­ly mid­dle class per­son would look at me and say, "What you do­ing in the PNM? You should be in the NAR." The PNM is not be­ing seen now as a par­ty at­trac­tive to the mid­dle class...

Isn't that a tragedy and didn't its founder Dr Er­ic Williams say the PNM tran­scend­ed race, class and the like..?

No, It is not a tragedy...it is an op­por­tu­ni­ty for us to re­make the PNM in­to this kind of par­ty.