The pub­lic ut­ter­ings on the va­lid­i­ty of the po­si­tion of the re-route move­ment have been con­fus­ing to the pub­lic due to the di­a­met­ric dif­fer­ences in the ar­tic­u­la­tion of what did or what had not oc­curred. His­tor­i­cal­ly, this coun­try has been plagued by tech­ni­cal as­sess­ments of con­tro­ver­sial projects that would ap­pear to sup­port the par­tic­u­lar de­ci­sion of a gov­ern­ment in pow­er rather than be an ob­jec­tive analy­sis of the is­sues at hand.

As an en­vi­ron­men­tal group with over 15 years' ex­pe­ri­ence in fight­ing var­i­ous gov­ern­ments, we have grown al­most re­signed to fight­ing tech­ni­cal chi­canery mas­querad­ing as tech­ni­cal ex­per­tise. It was the hope of many en­vi­ron­men­tal or­gan­i­sa­tions and in­di­vid­u­als, that a gov­ern­ment called the "Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship", that pledged to ren­der pub­lic protests re­dun­dant, would in­tro­duce prop­er pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions, and a Min­istry of the Peo­ple would have safe­guard­ed pub­lic in­ter­ests.

The re-route move­ment may not be right, but they are en­ti­tled to an in­de­pen­dent as­sess­ment of their ob­jec­tions/al­ter­na­tives and they have not yet had any in­de­pen­dent team ex­am­ine their con­cerns/rec­om­men­da­tions. No gov­ern­ment min­is­ter in their many pub­lic and at times dis­re­spect­ful and petu­lant pro­nounce­ments (Dr Mooni­lal in par­tic­u­lar), has pro­vid­ed the slight­est shred of ev­i­dence of an in­de­pen­dent tech­ni­cal re­view of the con­cerns of the re-route move­ment.

The Prime Min­is­ter has said that a team has ex­am­ined their con­cerns, but this is not the is­sue, and it is not rea­son­able since, in­de­pen­dent is in­de­pen­dent, and the team who re­port­ed to the Prime Min­is­ter was nev­er agreed to by any of the stake­hold­ers, was nev­er in­de­pen­dent of the Gov­ern­ment's in­ter­ests, nev­er sub­mit­ted its re­port for pub­lic view­ing, and nev­er met with the re-route move­ment or with the wider en­vi­ron­ment and so­cial ac­tivist sec­tors, in a for­mal and record­ed en­vi­ron­ment.

What­ev­er they pro­duced, or ad­vised was not pro­duced or ad­vised in a man­ner that can with­stand pub­lic scruti­ny. Closed-door de­lib­er­a­tions are un­de­mo­c­ra­t­ic, and be­tray the pub­lic trust with which we have based our mantra, "serve the peo­ple, serve the peo­ple, serve the peo­ple".

The Prime Min­is­ter has said that Kublals­ingh walked out of a meet­ing, but why did he walk out? Is it not be­cause he was con­front­ed by the same tech­nocrats and the same gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials that made the ini­tial pro­pos­al? Are we from a cul­ture where we ac­cept we are wrong and own up?

No doubt, poor com­mu­ni­ca­tion and an awk­ward­ly man­aged cam­paign have cre­at­ed a sense of hope­less­ness for Kublals­ingh, with lit­tle na­tion­al sup­port, and with a range of pub­lic mis­un­der­stand­ings, he has been swept in­to the waste pa­per bin of pub­lic opin­ion, where a range of pub­lic fig­ures, some with neb­u­lous mo­tives, have been joy­ful­ly rid­ing and kiss­ing on his band­wag­on.

While we can un­der­stand the re­luc­tance of a gov­ern­ment to re­spond to every hunger strik­er, lest to­mor­row 500 ac­tivists, (in­clud­ing FFOS) with 5,000 sep­a­rate is­sues turn up on the Prime Min­is­ter's doorstep, there is no ex­cuse for trau­ma­tis­ing the en­tire na­tion with the spec­ta­cle of an ac­tivist hav­ing to take ex­treme mea­sures and risk his life or well be­ing for an is­sue that reeks of in­jus­tice and is ca­pa­ble of easy res­o­lu­tion.

Ac­cord­ing­ly, FFOS calls on the Prime Min­is­ter and her good­ly Cab­i­net to please, please, please stop the high­way now, un­til an in­de­pen­dent team can be ap­point­ed com­pris­ing equal mem­bers from the Min­istry of Works and the Re-Route Move­ment and chaired by an ex­pert in the area of dis­pute res­o­lu­tion, with the pow­er to make a cast­ing vote on any tech­ni­cal de­ci­sion to be de­cid­ed.

The doc­u­ments are all in the pub­lic do­main and with swift ac­tion this can be re­solved in a mat­ter of weeks.

The oth­er op­tion is to al­low our beloved broth­er Wayne to die, and to cre­ate a mar­tyr who will live in the minds of the world and who will fur­ther weak­en an al­ready threat­ened ad­min­is­tra­tion. FFOS ap­peals to all cit­i­zens to call on their po­lit­i­cal rep­re­sen­ta­tives to ap­point this re­view team head­ed by an in­de­pen­dent per­son ca­pa­ble of re­solv­ing any po­ten­tial dead­lock.

Gary Aboud, Sec­re­tary,

Ter­rence Bed­doe, Pres­i­dent,

Fish­er­men and Friends of the Sea