Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@guardian.co.tt

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley is un­wor­ried and un­sur­prised by the Joint Trade Union Move­ment’s (JTUM) en­dorse­ment of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) for the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

He made the com­ment a day af­ter JTUM pres­i­dent gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get dur­ing Labour Day ob­ser­vances in Fyz­abad on Wednes­day, said the trade union um­brel­la body planned to form an al­liance with the UNC to get the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment out of gov­ern­ment.

Asked via What­sApp yes­ter­day if this de­vel­op­ment con­cerned him, the Prime Min­is­ter replied, “What’s new?”

In­fer­ring that this same thing hap­pened when the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship seized pow­er in 2010, Dr Kei­th Row­ley added, “We tast­ed that flavour in 2010, with great an­tic­i­pa­tion on the part of many. The on­ly pre­dictable out­come was chaos, con­fu­sion, lav­ish cor­rup­tion and bit­ter dis­ap­point­ment.”

Row­ley said fol­low­ing their sup­port for the Part­ner­ship, “none of the coun­try’s prob­lems were ad­dressed, far less to be suc­cess­ful­ly solved.”

Com­par­ing his par­ty’s con­duct with the Part­ner­ship’s per­for­mance, the Prime Min­is­ter con­tin­ued, “The PNM ad­min­is­tra­tions which I lead did the op­po­site. We du­ti­ful­ly en­gaged many of the burn­ing is­sues and treat­ed with them with­in the best op­tions avail­able to the pop­u­la­tion.”

Dr Row­ley ad­mit­ted, “Not all so­lu­tions were or are pain­less so it is not sur­pris­ing to hear or see oth­ers who are look­ing for op­por­tu­ni­ty mis­rep­re­sent our na­tion­al cir­cum­stances as fail­ures, even as they can present no cred­i­ble or rea­son­able al­ter­na­tives.”

Al­so ad­dress­ing JTUM’s plan, po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Bish­nu Ra­goonath said he does not be­lieve the PNM will be too wor­ried by the de­vel­op­ments.

“And I say that large­ly be­cause based on what we have seen in the past, the lead­er­ship of the unions do not nec­es­sar­i­ly seem to com­mand their fol­low­ers in how they vote. We’ve seen it hap­pen time and time again. For in­stance, union lead­ers will say don’t vote for that par­ty, vote for this one, and yet still that does not mean their fol­low­ers will sup­port it,” Ra­goonath ex­plained.

Ref­er­enc­ing David Ab­du­lah’s Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), he said, “The trade union move­ment has their own po­lit­i­cal par­ty, which is the MSJ, and yet still they can­not get peo­ple to vote for the MSJ, why?”

He ex­plained that the phe­nom­e­non of 2010 was be­cause the MSJ was al­so a part of the Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“So yes, in 2010 while they would have said let’s vote for the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship, af­ter the MSJ pulled out of the PP, notwith­stand­ing all that Ro­get and (David) Ab­du­lah have been say­ing, the MSJ has not been able to gar­ner a sig­nif­i­cant num­ber of votes. And to that ex­tent, I have to say the unions’ call to sup­port the po­lit­i­cal par­ty that came out of the union clear­ly fell on deaf ears,” he said.

Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Win­ford James agreed some­what with Ra­goonath, but be­lieves Row­ley should be con­cerned.

“I think they should be. If you have a cus­tom­ary al­ly who is shift­ing their sup­port from you, then that is a mat­ter of con­cern if you want to re­tain pow­er. Maybe he wants to give the im­pres­sion that wor­ry is not jus­ti­fied.

“Cer­tain­ly, in oth­er ju­ris­dic­tions across the world, if the unions are go­ing to va­cate their sup­port of you and tell you so, you have got to be care­ful if you want to hold on­to pow­er,” James said.

But JTUM is al­so not uni­fied in its sup­port for the UNC. Some unions said yes­ter­day that their po­si­tion re­mains po­lit­i­cal­ly neu­tral.

Dur­ing Labour Day cel­e­bra­tions, the Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion (TTUTA) pres­i­dent Mar­tin Lum Kin made it clear they were not sup­port­ing any po­lit­i­cal par­ty and will not share a plat­form with unions that do.

Yes­ter­day, three oth­er unions fol­lowed suit.

Speak­ing on be­half of the Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers Union (AWU), gen­er­al sec­re­tary Cas­san­dra Tom­my-Dabreo said while it is af­fil­i­at­ed with JTUM, “amal­ga­mat­ed is stay­ing out of the po­lit­i­cal are­na.”

“So Amal­ga­mat­ed is stay­ing out of any po­lit­i­cal things be­cause at the end of the day, our mem­ber­ship is the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go, and we tell them to vote for whomev­er they choose.”

Mean­while, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union’s (CWU) sec­re­tary gen­er­al Joanne Ogeer said, “We are an in­de­pen­dent trade union. We do not have any af­fil­i­a­tions with the PNM, nor the UNC and we are not, just like TTUTA, we are not go­ing to sup­port, we stand aside if so be it and we will not be part of any coali­tion or sup­port to the UNC, we are an in­de­pen­dent trade union.”

How­ev­er, Bank­ing In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers’ Trade Union (BIG­WU) pres­i­dent Don De­venish said they were yet to de­cide.

“I know what was said yes­ter­day but BIG­WU is not en­dors­ing any po­lit­i­cal par­ty. That was said at a JTUM meet­ing, but JTUM has tak­en a po­si­tion by a ma­jor­i­ty that they will sup­port the UNC. But our union has not tak­en up a po­si­tion to en­dorse any po­lit­i­cal par­ty at this point in time,” De­venish said.

“In the past, the union has some­times en­dorsed a po­lit­i­cal par­ty but for the forth­com­ing elec­tion, the union has not tak­en up any po­si­tion. We are still look­ing at it.”

Mem­bers of the JTUM um­brel­la in­clude:

Amal­ga­mat­ed Work­ers Union

Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Work­ers’ Union

Con­trac­tors and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union

Avi­a­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion and Al­lied Work­ers’ Union

Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union

Trinidad and To­ba­go Postal Work­ers Union

Na­tion­al Nurs­ing As­so­ci­a­tion

Trinidad and To­ba­go Uni­fied Teach­ers’ As­so­ci­a­tion

Trinidad and To­ba­go Farm­ers’ Union

Fire Ser­vice As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go

Prison Of­fi­cers’ As­so­ci­a­tion of Trinidad and To­ba­go

Bank­ing, In­sur­ance and Gen­er­al Work­ers Union

Steel Work­ers Union of Trinidad and To­ba­go

In­dus­tri­al Gen­er­al and San­i­ta­tion Work­ers Union