Jensen La Vende

Se­nior Re­porter

jensen.lavende@guardian.co.tt

Union lead­ers in­ten­si­fied their cam­paign to un­seat the Gov­ern­ment in the up­com­ing 2025 gen­er­al elec­tion, vow­ing to mo­bilise larg­er crowds and sus­tain pub­lic march­es.

This vow came from Oil­field Work­ers’ Trade Union (OW­TU) Pres­i­dent Gen­er­al An­cel Ro­get, who de­liv­ered a let­ter to the gate of the Prime Min­is­ter’s of­fi­cial res­i­dence on La Fan­tasie Road, St Ann’s, yes­ter­day.

In the three-page let­ter, the unions urged Dr Kei­th Row­ley to re­con­sid­er and re­scind his ac­cep­tance of the Salaries Re­view Com­mis­sion’s (SRC) rec­om­men­da­tion for a sub­stan­tial pay in­crease for him­self, the Op­po­si­tion Leader, MPs, and oth­er high-rank­ing state of­fi­cials.

The let­ter was placed in an open­ing be­tween the gate and a poster with the Coat of Arms af­ter a po­lice of­fi­cer on du­ty told Ro­get, Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Joint Trade Union Move­ment (JTUM) Ozzi War­wick and Gen­er­al Sec­re­tary of the Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre (NATUC) Michael An­nisette that he was not au­tho­rised to ac­cept the let­ter.

He ad­vised the men to re­turn to­mor­row when the ad­min­is­tra­tive staff will be at work.

Af­ter drop­ping off the let­ter, Ro­get ad­dressed the gath­er­ing, stat­ing that the day would come when the union could vis­it the Prime Min­is­ter’s res­i­dence with­out be­ing turned away or de­nied en­try.

“We have to pre­pare, and at that time will be ac­com­pa­nied by many, many, many thou­sands of us. That time is not now.”

Ro­get ac­cused Row­ley of “bar­ri­cad­ing him­self” while the peo­ple were out­side cry­ing out for jus­tice.

“When you were in op­po­si­tion, it was dif­fer­ent. You would have been pound­ing down that gate. The ta­bles turn. The time is com­ing soon,” he added.

The let­ter was de­liv­ered af­ter the coun­try’s top labour unions and some of their mem­bers gath­ered out­side White­hall to voice their dis­plea­sure with the way the coun­try is be­ing man­aged.

Speak­ing out­side White­hall, Ro­get warned that the coun­try was on the brink of cri­sis and urged the pop­u­la­tion to take ac­tion. He de­scribed the gath­er­ing as the first step in a grow­ing move­ment to re­move the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment from pow­er.

The at­mos­phere blend­ed the en­er­gy of a Labour Day march with the vi­bran­cy of a rhythm sec­tion re­hearsal. Dressed in the colours of their re­spec­tive unions, the crowd at­ten­tive­ly lis­tened to the speak­ers, ready to chant in uni­son—“Vote them out,” “Fail”, or “No”—when­ev­er prompt­ed, all with a shared de­ter­mi­na­tion to bring an end to the in­cum­bent gov­ern­ment’s rule.

While all labour lead­ers or a mem­ber of their ex­ec­u­tive ad­dressed the crowd, it was Pub­lic Ser­vices As­so­ci­a­tion pres­i­dent Leroy Bap­tiste, who cap­tured their ears and hearts.

To the chants of “Vote him (Row­ley) out,” Bap­tiste said, “I not telling you who to vote for. But let me tell you who not to vote for! Com­rades, any man here, af­ter we talk all this, could even en­ter­tain in their mind to put that tyrant back in of­fice ... that is be­ing sui­ci­dal! And you are de­stroy­ing not on­ly your life, you’re de­stroy­ing your fam­i­ly, your chil­dren, and your chil­dren’s chil­dren.”

He added that the coun­try now has a po­lit­i­cal prob­lem and there was on­ly one way to solve it, by vot­ing the PNM out of of­fice.

“The on­ly re­sponse to a po­lit­i­cal prob­lem is a po­lit­i­cal re­sponse. All who fed up of the talk, I hope you ready to vote. That is the on­ly so­lu­tion to a po­lit­i­cal prob­lem.”

Among the crowd were no­table fig­ures from var­i­ous po­lit­i­cal par­ties. Rep­re­sent­ing the UNC were Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Wade Mark, Cou­va South MP Rudranath In­dars­ingh, deputy po­lit­i­cal leader David Lee, the Mp for Pointe-a-Pierre, and Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly.

Gary Grif­fith, leader of the NTA, was present with some of his mem­bers as well as leader of the Con­gress of the Peo­ple Kirt Sin­nette and po­lit­i­cal leader of Hon­esty Op­por­tu­ni­ty Per­for­mance Em­pow­er­ment (HOPE) Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith.

Ro­get, while wrap­ping up at White­hall, called on those who re­mained de­spite the mid­day sun beat­ing down on them, to turn their anger in­to ac­tion and vote ac­cord­ing­ly when the time comes.