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Wednesday, March 19, 2025

Prakash: T&T in grave danger if PNM gets another term

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9 days ago
20250310

Free­lance Con­trib­u­tor

Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader Prakash Ra­mad­har is warn­ing that Trinidad and To­ba­go will face “grave dan­ger” if the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) re­mains in pow­er for an­oth­er term.

Speak­ing at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the par­ty’s Curepe head­quar­ters on Sat­ur­day, Ra­mad­har de­scribed the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion as one of the most crit­i­cal in the na­tion’s his­to­ry.

“This coun­try is in such grave dan­ger that many do not grasp the enor­mi­ty of what lies ahead. If we think things are bad now, we fail to un­der­stand the de­struc­tive forces that could be un­leashed, if they haven’t al­ready be­gun,” he said.

Ra­mad­har lament­ed that T&T, once a leader in the re­gion, has now be­come “a laugh­ing stock on al­most every lev­el.” He blamed the PNM Gov­ern­ment for the coun­try’s spi­ralling crime rate, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas tra­di­tion­al­ly loy­al to the par­ty.

“In the heart­land of the PNM that has gov­erned this coun­try for all the years, this is mad­ness. They can­not even con­trol a com­mu­ni­ty that they have gov­erned all of the time from in­de­pen­dence on­wards, they al­most afraid to go in,” he said in an ap­par­ent ref­er­ence to the on­go­ing vi­o­lence in Sea Lots.

“The state is now weak and meek. T&T is more than these things, we must re­store law and or­der with de­cen­cy and fair­ness.”

Ra­mad­har al­so crit­i­cised the PNM’s han­dling of the econ­o­my, point­ing to the clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery and the sub­se­quent at­tempt to sell it years lat­er af­ter it has de­te­ri­o­rat­ed.

“What stopped the PNM from look­ing for a buy­er back then?” he ques­tioned.

He warned of a wors­en­ing for­eign ex­change cri­sis, pre­dict­ing that once the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund is de­plet­ed, the coun­try may strug­gle to af­ford ba­sic food im­ports. He said if that hap­pens, T&T could see suf­fer­ing like what was wit­nessed in Venezuela. And if things spi­ral fur­ther out of con­trol, he said T&T may end up like Haiti, where the gov­ern­ment has com­plete­ly lost its grip.

Ra­mad­har al­so dis­missed out­dat­ed po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tives, say­ing, “The old pro­pa­gan­da about politi­cians ‘thief­ing’ won’t be enough to sway vot­ers this time.”

Ra­mad­har ad­mit­ted that the COP, now 19 years old and the third-largest par­ty in T&T, has been large­ly dor­mant in re­cent years. How­ev­er, he in­sist­ed that the par­ty was nev­er dead, just side­lined by po­lit­i­cal forces that dis­missed its vi­sion of “new pol­i­tics,” a term coined by for­mer leader Win­ston Dook­er­an.

“I want to put to rest to­day that we were wrong to call it new pol­i­tics. What we ex­er­cised in the po­lit­i­cal sphere is the time­less val­ues that have al­lowed so­ci­ety for eons to have suc­ceed­ed. You can­not have lead­er­ship with­out in­tegri­ty, you can­not have lead­er­ship with­out hon­esty, lead­er­ship with­out fair­ness, lead­er­ship with­out love.”

With his ral­ly­ing call, Ra­mad­har urged sup­port­ers to re­vive the COP and re­claim its place in na­tion­al pol­i­tics. Ra­mad­har did not take ques­tions from the me­dia fol­low­ing the meet­ing. How­ev­er, he said all ques­tions would be an­swered lat­er this week when the COP holds a news con­fer­ence at a date to be an­nounced.

The meet­ing start­ed around 3.30 pm. By this time, sup­port­ers start­ed to fill the venue and a num­ber of them lined up out­side with plac­ards high­light­ing the lev­el of crime in T&T and oth­er is­sues.

Oth­er speak­ers in­clud­ed Dr Sel­wyn Sama­roo, Ger­ard Small, deputy COP leader Pa­tri­cia Ce­de­no-Metivi­er and Women’s Arm chair Ali­cia Sharp.

Sharpe knocked the Gov­ern­ment for wait­ing too long to deal with do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. Re­fer­ring to re­cent state­ments made by prime min­is­ter-des­ig­nate Stu­art Young about the im­ple­men­ta­tion of stiffer penal­ties for do­mes­tic vi­o­lence of­fend­ers, she said, “How many time all yuh stiff­en the laws and the women still get­ting kill. What laws yuh talk­ing about stiff­en­ing? We need so­cial in­ter­ven­tion in this.”


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