Gail Alexan­der

If de­ceased PNM leader Patrick Man­ning had been the par­ty’s leader to­day, the pub­lic def­i­nite­ly wouldn’t have had “this sor­did mess” of the col­lapsed case against Anand Ram­lo­gan and Ger­ald Ramdeen be­ing laid out on the front pages of every na­tion­al news­pa­per , says UNC Sen­a­tor Jear­lean John.

“And which, in­ci­den­tal­ly, is re­flec­tive of what the PNM has be­come. Be­cause I’ve stud­ied and prac­ticed man­age­ment, and with­out a shad­ow of a doubt, an or­gan­i­sa­tion takes on the DNA of its leader. An or­gan­i­sa­tion’s be­hav­iour is re­flec­tive of its leader,” John said dur­ing yes­ter­day’s Sen­ate Bud­get de­bate.

“The op­tics of this mess we face is the in­equal­i­ty we see every­where af­ter sev­en-plus years of this ar­ro­gant, out of touch, and elit­ist Gov­ern­ment, who, by the way, has been the most un­pro­duc­tive, with no plan, no vi­sion, just plain worst gov­ern­ment in the his­to­ry of this coun­try.” She added, “I ac­tu­al­ly heard their Prime Min­is­ter re­peat­ing some of these at­trib­ut­es as­cribed to him in his ad­dress in Diego Mar­tin last evening. It’s been a fail­ure af­ter fail­ure, scan­dal af­ter scan­dal, mis­step and mis­take; the dai­ly mes­sage now is not if the Gov­ern­ment will fail but when, where and how.”

John said she was amazed some PNM Sen­a­tors were quot­ing for­mer leader Man­ning in de­bate.

“I hope they’re do­ing so with the per­mis­sion of their cur­rent leader, who stands for none of the pos­i­tive val­ues and sen­ti­ments as­so­ci­at­ed with the Ho­n­ourable Mr Man­ning,” she said.

“That was a dif­fer­ent time in pol­i­tics, when you could have dis­agreed on pol­i­cy is­sues with­out be­ing dis­agree­able and nasty. You could dis­agree, but al­so find op­por­tu­ni­ties for con­sen­sus.”

John ex­plained that in 2001, she was among three peo­ple with then-prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day ne­go­ti­at­ing the han­dover of the gov­ern­ment to Man­ning.

“What took us through and very like­ly saved our democ­ra­cy was the pa­tri­o­tism and grace of out­go­ing PM Pan­day and in­com­ing PM Man­ning. You didn’t have this el­e­vat­ed lev­el of ac­ri­mo­ny, ran­cour and mean-spirit­ed­ness.”

John al­so said to make a dent in the crime scourge, it re­quires an all-of-gov­ern­ment and all-of-T&T ap­proach.

“But there’s noth­ing in this Bud­get which fires up the coun­try to feel hope and op­ti­mism, and to ral­ly with the Gov­ern­ment,” she said.

She cit­ed the case of Jamie Walk­er, who was “killed over where he’s parked, mur­dered in full view of his wife and three lit­tle chil­dren.”

She added: “We can­not recog­nise this coun­try, where a moth­er throws gas on her two chil­dren, lit them on fire, locks the door and walks off and leaves them there to die.

“Or a T&T where a 15-year-old school­boy, Videsh Dookran, was chopped, shot and his body stuffed in­to a la­trine at the back of a Gol­con­da shop.

“To quote a so­cial me­dia post, ‘The sheer bru­tal­i­ty of this mur­der!’ The sheer bru­tal­i­ty of the be­head­ed and dis­mem­bered body ... these don’t ap­pear to be drug and gang-re­lat­ed killings but re­venge for some stu­pid­ness.

“What can a 15-year-old boy do to de­serve this? The fight for drug turf and the gangs es­tab­lished to do it sug­gests some kin­da warped log­ic. But you chop a 15-year-old boy in his head and face, break his legs and pump shots in his chest, then stuff him in­to a la­trine?”

Rec­om­mend­ing ‘a pre­ven­tion first pol­i­cy’, John said, “We’re find­ing out that the most dan­ger­ous per­son in the world is a young, broke and alone male, and we’re just pro­duc­ing too many of them. Too many young men who aren’t at­tached to any­thing—not to work, their homes, schools, church­es, or com­mu­ni­ties. They’re just adrift. We need to in­vest in young men go­ing to school, get­ting a job, be­ing re­spon­si­ble.”