Ralph Ban­warie

De­fence Min­is­ter and To­co/San­gre Grande MP Wayne Sturge said he nev­er want­ed a min­is­te­r­i­al post, but Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar told him it was too late.

“Af­ter she was sworn in, she asked what I wished for,” Sturge said. “I replied, ‘I wish to be left alone’.”

She asked: ‘What do you mean?’ I said I didn’t want to be a min­is­ter be­cause I told the peo­ple of To­co/San­gre Grande on the cam­paign trail they need­ed a full-time MP. It would be vir­tu­al­ly im­pos­si­ble to man­age a min­istry, es­pe­cial­ly De­fence, and still prop­er­ly serve my con­stituen­cy.”

He said the Prime Min­is­ter told him there’s a con­ven­tion in pol­i­tics that you can­not de­cline na­tion­al ser­vice.

“She as­sured me she’d build a team to de­liv­er on all we promised the peo­ple of To­co/San­gre Grande.”

Sturge re­vealed his fam­i­ly was about to mi­grate to the Unit­ed States.

“The coun­try had reached a point. It was head­ing down the wrong road. I feared for our safe­ty and fu­ture. But I re­alised I’d be ab­di­cat­ing my re­spon­si­bil­i­ty and aban­don­ing my an­ces­tral home. My fam­i­ly would be sec­ond-class cit­i­zens abroad.”

He said T&T is a great coun­try.

“We spent nine-plus years un­der a man who boast­ed about us­ing an obeah man against his leader, a good man, Mr Man­ning. We paid dear­ly. But now we are un­der a dif­fer­ent dis­pen­sa­tion, the love of a moth­er. There is no more dis­crim­i­na­tion, and the vi­sion is in­clu­siv­i­ty,” he said

Sturge, who was speak­ing at Vish­wanath Mandir’s Vic­to­ry Cel­e­bra­tion and Her­itage Month event in San­gre Chiq­ui­to, added: “I looked at the crowd—African, In­di­an, Chi­nese, mixed—and I felt vin­di­cat­ed. I stayed to fight.

“I nev­er thought I’d be a pa­tri­ot but this coun­try de­serves love. We cel­e­brate our dif­fer­ences not just in words, but in ac­tion.”

He crit­i­cised elites, es­pe­cial­ly the ed­u­cat­ed, for fu­elling di­vi­sion. “In sci­ence, 99 per cent of our DNA is the same. That one per cent with an in­sa­tiable ap­petite for tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey—those are the ones who di­vide us.”

He said some elites de­fend ob­scene speech un­der the guise of free speech.

“You can’t make lewd com­par­isons in­volv­ing a revered de­ity. That’s not free speech. That’s cor­rup­tion of our chil­dren.”

He said elites al­so mis­rep­re­sent­ed his call for army re­cruit­ment to help un­em­ployed youth.

“Some pre­fer to see young men un­der gang lead­ers than un­der mil­i­tary dis­ci­pline. Why the me­dia didn’t run my re­sponse? God alone knows,” he said

Sturge said the De­fence Min­istry would make hard de­ci­sions.

“But it will ben­e­fit all of us as we tack­le crime to­geth­er,” he as­sured.