Gail Alexan­der

Failed!

That was the re­ac­tion to calls for pub­lic trans­port op­er­a­tors to “boy­cott” work yes­ter­day due to the par­tial hike in fu­el prices that be­gan at mid­night.

And the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ “Enough is Enough” protests against the is­sue, which were planned in 27 ar­eas, were dis­persed by the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice due to lack of po­lice per­mis­sion.

Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent­ly an­nounced $1 fu­el price hike on Pre­mi­um and Su­per gaso­line and 50 cents on diesel came in­to ef­fec­tive yes­ter­day—the same day schools re­opened for the first full term in in-per­son class­es in two years.

Ad­just­ments are due to high­er oil prices fol­low­ing Rus­sia’s in­va­sion of Ukraine. This would have hiked the fu­el sub­sidy cost in T&T to $1.47 bil­lion with­out ad­just­ment.

Ob­jec­tion against the price hike had in­creased when the Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) as­sist­ed in or­gan­is­ing cer­tain trans­port stake­hold­ers in­to a Na­tion­al Trans­porta­tion As­so­ci­a­tion which sought talks with Gov­ern­ment on their is­sues and the price hike.

PEP threat­ened the dead­line for the fu­el price hike would be met with re­sis­tance if Gov­ern­ment re­fused con­sul­ta­tion and if the gas hike was giv­en the green light with­out the NTA’s in­put, “trans­port op­er­a­tions could grind to a halt.” PEP con­firmed yes­ter­day there was no re­sponse to this.

A voice note by Adri­an Acos­ta, pres­i­dent of the T&T Taxi Dri­vers’ Net­work, had al­so called for peo­ple to stay home yes­ter­day and send Gov­ern­ment a mes­sage, “Enough is Enough.”

But a round trip from St James (north) to La Ro­main (south) and back yes­ter­day be­tween ear­ly morn­ing to 1 pm, con­firmed max­is, taxis and trucks were work­ing and dri­vers in var­i­ous lo­ca­tions dis­missed “boy­cott” talk.

“Madame, I have to feed my fam­i­ly. When time come for pol­i­tics, then I go study any­thing. I un­der­stand the con­cern but boy­cott ent putting food on mih ta­ble,” said an el­der­ly (La Ro­main) dri­ver at 9.55 am.

“Every Prime Min­is­ter does get blame—all dem gov­ern­ments,” said a Ch­agua­nas dri­ver.

“I came from Co­coyea Vil­lage to Port-of-Spain ear­ly. I got the usu­al taxi out of Co­coyea and al­so eas­i­ly to Port-of-Spain. I’m now on my way back,” said a fe­male pas­sen­ger.

“I on my third trip. Boy­cott? PH dri­vers like me go make mon­ey!” added a St James dri­ver at 8 am.

Port-of-Spain-San Fer­nan­do and Ch­agua­nas taxi stands were full on In­de­pen­dence Square.

Princes Town dri­vers were hus­tling pas­sen­gers at mid-morn­ing off Li­brary Cor­ner. Brown band max­is to Point Fortin, La Brea, Fyz­abad and sur­round­ing ar­eas were at the King’s Wharf hub

Com­ment­ing on the yes­ter­day’s ac­tion, Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning (San Fer­nan­do East MP) said, “It’s un­for­tu­nate op­po­si­tion forces would have tried to use this (fu­el price) as an ex­cuse to dis­rupt the first day of school. Our chil­dren have been look­ing for­ward to this day for so long!

“And the op­po­si­tion could do no bet­ter than to at­tempt to dash their dreams? Our chil­dren de­serve bet­ter. For­tu­nate­ly, op­po­si­tion calls for dis­rup­tion went most­ly un­heed­ed. I com­mend the peo­ple of T&T on plac­ing our chil­dren and our coun­try first.”

CoP Ja­cob: Op­po­si­tion

had no per­mis­sion

Ear­ly morn­ing com­muters along the Churchill Roo­sevelt High­way saw plac­ard-tot­ing Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress pro­tes­tors lin­ing walkovers at Cou­va, Carlsen Field, Munroe Road and En­deav­our.

A doc­u­ment head­ed “From the Desk of Our Leader” car­ry­ing UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s name at the end, mean­while list­ed protest lo­ca­tions from Debe Round­about to San Juan.

The doc­u­ment named UNC MPs and sen­a­tors head­ing protests in re­spec­tive ar­eas. It stat­ed that those in­volved would be staff, UNC coun­cil­lors, al­der­men and ac­tivists in Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment-held ar­eas.

But TTPS of­fi­cers were seen at the walkovers and oth­er places and the UNC’s protests were even­tu­al­ly dis­persed since they didn’t have po­lice per­mis­sion.

By 9.30 am, all that was left of the walkover protests were ban­ners se­cured to the rails at the walkovers. None were seen at Clax­ton Bay or Gas­par­il­lo.

Act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc­Don­ald Ja­cob con­firmed yes­ter­day that no ap­pli­ca­tions were re­ceived for the UNC’s protest ac­tion.

Ja­cob said while peo­ple have the right to protest, the Sum­ma­ry Of­fences Act in­di­cat­ed the method to be fol­lowed to have a pub­lic meet­ing or march.

“Over a pe­ri­od we have quite will­ing­ly been ap­prov­ing march­es and meet­ings for dif­fer­ent groups but we re­ceived no ap­pli­ca­tions for any protests (yes­ter­day),” Ja­cob said.
Ja­cob said one had to be mind­ful that in a de­mo­c­ra­t­ic so­ci­ety, there may be peo­ple who have op­pos­ing views to those protest­ing. As such, he said the TTPS must en­sure safe­ty and law and or­der for those who demon­strate, as well as oth­ers who may op­pose their views.

“When you or­gan­ise a meet­ing or march with­out po­lice per­mis­sion, that’s putting your­self and oth­ers at risk. So we al­ways ad­vise peo­ple to have that lev­el of safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty, ad­here to the law and ap­ply for the rel­e­vant per­mis­sion so things can be done in a or­der­ly way. To pro­vide se­cu­ri­ty for all.”

UNC leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar had com­plained about the “shut­down by po­lice,” “dic­ta­tor­ship” and “four van­loads of po­lice sent to shut down” the Tu­na­puna protest.

UNC chair­man Dave Tan­coo said, “UNC par­tic­i­pat­ed in over 27 peace­ful demon­stra­tions through­out Trinidad. There was a very heavy po­lice pres­ence who gen­er­al­ly fa­cil­i­tat­ed the smooth con­duct of this na­tion­al protest. How­ev­er, it’s un­for­tu­nate some cit­i­zens were pre­vent­ed by some of­fi­cers from ex­er­cis­ing their civ­il rights to protest against the con­tin­ued in­sen­si­tiv­i­ty and abuse by this Gov­ern­ment.

“Still, as prices con­tin­ue in­creas­ing and cit­i­zens’ frus­tra­tion con­tin­ues es­ca­lat­ing, the state can ex­pect more protests. This lat­est hike in fu­el prices will lead to an­oth­er round of gen­er­al price in­creas­es on a pop­u­la­tion not yet out of the eco­nom­ic hole of the pan­dem­ic ...”

UNC’s Roodal Mooni­lal con­firmed his protest didn’t have per­mis­sion, “But we as­sem­bled, we didn’t march.”