No-con­fi­dence mo­tions are his­tor­i­cal­ly a par­lia­men­tary tool used to call in­to ques­tion the fail­ures, in­com­pe­tence and loss of con­fi­dence in a Prime Min­is­ter, min­is­ters or a gov­ern­ment.

Tra­di­tion­al­ly, they bring lit­tle val­ue ex­cept for the op­po­si­tion to high­light those neg­a­tive qual­i­ties and present an op­por­tu­ni­ty for the gov­ern­ment to boast about their per­ceived achieve­ments and to blast the op­po­si­tion for wrong­do­ing and fail­ures in the Par­lia­ment.

No-con­fi­dence mo­tions do not have a chance of suc­ceed­ing with­in the ‘hal­lowed’ walls of Par­lia­ment where elect­ed MPs gath­er to con­duct what they like to boast of as ‘the peo­ple’s busi­ness’.

Know­ing that lit­tle val­ue is placed on such mo­tions in the Par­lia­ment, it was no sur­prise then that mem­bers of the trade union move­ment on Sun­day con­vert­ed the Char­lie King Junc­tion, the home of labour, in­to a ‘Work­ers’ Par­lia­ment’ to move their own mo­tion of no-con­fi­dence in Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his Gov­ern­ment. Work­ers vot­ed a re­sound­ing ‘Yes’ when the ques­tion was put by OW­TU pres­i­dent-gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get as to whether they had lost con­fi­dence in the Gov­ern­ment.

Their rea­sons were many.

“He’s send­ing work­ers home, prices of food, goods and ser­vices are go­ing up every day, you have no mon­ey to send your chil­dren to school, you are fac­ing in­creased util­i­ty rates, you have rent, mort­gage, bank loan, hire pur­chase and in­stal­ments to pay. All of this com­ing af­ter a pan­dem­ic with no wage in­crease and now prop­er­ty tax. How heart­less can these peo­ple be? They are speak­ing with forked tongues, from both sides of their mouths,” Ro­get de­clared to the cheers of the hun­dreds of work­ers gath­ered.

The work­ers’ mo­tion will be de­liv­ered to Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes and to the Par­lia­ment on Fri­day.

“We not mak­ing joke!” Ro­get said.

Mr Ro­get and his team must know lit­tle will change when the mo­tion is de­liv­ered. But they are act­ing on be­half of thou­sands of voice­less cit­i­zens.

One can on­ly hope that the Prime Min­is­ter, who has been out of the coun­try for some time, will recog­nise that the dis­con­tent of the work­ing class is a snap­shot of how the wider pop­u­la­tion strug­gling to make ends meet feels at present.

Dr Row­ley may well want to ac­cuse the trade union move­ment of align­ing po­lit­i­cal­ly with the op­po­si­tion against his Gov­ern­ment, but the stark re­al­i­ty is that thou­sands of peo­ple in this twin-is­land re­pub­lic are suf­fer­ing.

The Gov­ern­ment has many in­ter­nal is­sues to fix it­self, in­clud­ing ques­tions sur­round­ing At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour and Min­is­ter of Youth De­vel­op­ment and Na­tion­al Ser­vice Fos­ter Cum­mings, food short­ages, ris­ing food prices, es­ca­lat­ing crime, pover­ty, abuse in chil­dren’s homes and un­em­ploy­ment.

One would hope, there­fore, that Dr Row­ley, who has been silent on the AG is­sue and giv­en Cum­mings con­tin­ued sup­port, will be cog­nisant of the fact that peo­ple are at boil­ing point and on­ly he can ad­dress the pop­u­la­tion’s con­cerns.

Dr Row­ley must recog­nise by now that si­lence is no longer an op­tion and must al­so un­der­stand that peo­ple are tired of his nar­ra­tive of blam­ing the op­po­si­tion for every­thing. He has been the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T for sev­en years and his Gov­ern­ment must take re­spon­si­bil­i­ty for some of what cit­i­zens are fac­ing. He must, there­fore, be hon­est with the pop­u­la­tion. To do oth­er­wise is an in­sult to all right-think­ing peo­ple.