I read with the great­est dis­may and dis­ap­point­ment a let­ter from Dan­ny Fonz­worth, pre­sum­ably from Rio Claro, say­ing that Min­is­ter of En­er­gy Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan vi­o­lat­ed a nat­ur­al gas pol­i­cy by re­veal­ing the price of nat­ur­al gas for the now can­celled (thank God) Alutrint smelter.

Now I have al­ready ex­pressed my view on the smelter and the fact that an en­tire elec­torate passed over a con­sti­tu­tion­al ma­jor­i­ty Gov­ern­ment to the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship and body slammed the PNM in­to Op­po­si­tion be­cause of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion's de­ter­mi­na­tion to build smelters in our coun­try, among oth­er rea­sons. ?

I have al­so ex­pressed the view that those protest­ing right now are a hand­ful of peo­ple in a weak­ened PNM par­ty group be­ing mis­led by the MP for La Brea, Fitzger­ald Jef­frey, a man des­per­ate to make a name for him­self.?Such is the wicked­ness of the PNM that it is just as strong, even in Op­po­si­tion.

But what is more dis­turb­ing is that there still re­mains a hand­ful of peo­ple com­plete­ly bereft of ideas and ig­no­rant of im­por­tant is­sues such as trans­paren­cy in gov­ern­ment.?

When a na­tion's econ­o­my stands in large part on a dwin­dling re­source, the sup­ply of which was weak­ened even more by the in­com­pe­tence of the PNM to en­cour­age more com­pa­nies to search for and find new gas de­posits, the peo­ple of that na­tion must de­mand to know what gas is be­ing sold at. This is the trans­paren­cy we vot­ed for and this is the trans­paren­cy the En­er­gy Min­is­ter has com­mit­ted her­self to.

Those in the PNM will not un­der­stand trans­paren­cy, and the fact that it ac­tu­al­ly boosts com­pet­i­tive­ness and en­cour­ages for­eign in­vest­ment in­to an econ­o­my and if it is the in­tel­lec­tu­al strength of peo­ple like Jef­frey and Fonz­worth that the PNM is now stand­ing on, it will be a very long time in­deed be­fore they ever come close to even lo­cal gov­ern­ment con­trol, far less cen­tral gov­ern­ment. And thank God for that.

With every day that pass­es, the failed PNM and its fly-by-night par­ty group/protest brigade is jus­ti­fy­ing the na­tion's de­ci­sion to have women like Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as our Prime Min­is­ter and Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan as the En­er­gy Min­is­ter of our coun­try.

Kr­ish­na Mad­han

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