by Ra­mona Ram­di­al

The Mat­ter­horn is a world-renowned peak of the Eu­ro­pean Alps and sad­ly in Trin­ba­go, what we have is the deep po­lit­i­cal gut­ter of the “Meta Horn”: Al­le­ga­tions of in­fi­deli­ty in the high­est house­hold from one who al­leged­ly suf­fered sim­i­lar cuck­oldry and whose leader would have en­cour­aged un­faith­ful­ness to their burgess­es by in­struct­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment coun­cil­lors not to at­tend last week’s meet­ing on the op­er­a­tional­i­sa­tion of lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form.

In­stead of en­cour­ag­ing a cal­cu­lat­ed at­tack on the Prime Min­is­ter and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter by UNC coun­cil­lors, en masse, they were en­cour­aged to put horn on their burgess­es by leav­ing them un­rep­re­sent­ed at the most ap­pro­pri­ate and elu­sive fo­rum! So, the slo­gans may have ex­pand­ed from “Take b*ll,” “Eat grass” to “Take horn” al­so!

By ac­ci­dent or by de­sign, Samuel Sankar was the lone UNC coun­cil­lor to at­tend, claim­ing that a meet­ing called by the UNC Na­tion­al Ex­ec­u­tive to dis­cuss the lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form meet­ing in­di­cat­ed con­sen­sus, at 7 pm last Mon­day evening, that all UNC coun­cil­lors would at­tend to give PM Row­ley and Min­is­ter Al-Rawi an ear­ful on their chal­lenges.

Two hours lat­er, dur­ing her MNF speech, Per­sad-Bisses­sar uni­lat­er­al­ly changed that de­ci­sion. The po­lit­i­cal leader did not pay cour­tesy to her coun­cil­lors by at­tend­ing the Nat-Ex meet­ing en cam­era, in­stead turn­ing up be­lat­ed­ly “on cam­era” to warn them not to be “fowls in a yard” while si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly ad­dress­ing the pub­lic.

Coun­cil­lor Sankar did not get the memo. He should have known that par­ty pol­i­cy changes at the leader’s whims. Re­gard­less, he is de­serv­ing of com­men­da­tion for rep­re­sent­ing his “12,000” burgess­es.

He made the point that all the protest­ing and ham­per give­aways can on­ly achieve so much and do not solve the prob­lems faced by his burgess­es dai­ly. He claimed he got an op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak di­rect­ly to the Min­is­ter and re­ceived as­sur­ance that help would come his way.

When I was a Min­is­ter of Gov­ern­ment, the Op­po­si­tion’s coun­cil­lors were nev­er afraid to ap­proach me di­rect­ly for re­sources for their burgess­es, as we had a lev­el of po­lit­i­cal ma­tu­ri­ty and re­spect as we worked to­geth­er to serve the peo­ple.

The UNC coun­cil­lors had noth­ing to lose by at­tend­ing that meet­ing, in ser­vice of the peo­ple. How­ev­er, when their leader told them that the Prime Min­is­ter couldn’t fire them, she was re­al­ly say­ing SHE could fire them. Like good fowls, they went home to roost. UNC coun­cil­lor Sankar was the lone wolf. Last week, Au­gust 10, marked the sec­ond an­niver­sary of the UNC lead­er­ship’s lat­est Gen­er­al Elec­tion loss and its sev­enth con­sec­u­tive year in Op­po­si­tion.

In those sev­en years, it seems that the 19 con­stituen­cies and sev­en cor­po­ra­tions held by the UNC have been to­tal­ly starved of re­sources by the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. This seems to have been the ex­cuse giv­en for non-at­ten­dance but strange­ly, the MP for Ch­agua­nas East was able to pub­licly thank the Min­is­ter of Works re­cent­ly for the paving of the En­deav­our Road. UNC coun­cil­lors have al­so been re­ceiv­ing oth­er paving, drainage, land­slip re­ha­bil­i­ta­tion and clean­ing of un­der­ground drain works. So maybe com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween Op­po­si­tion and Gov­ern­ment can bring re­sults. As re­gards the re­gres­sion to rev­el­ling in the PM’s al­leged do­mes­tic strife, heavy in­vest­ment in the scan­dal­i­sa­tion of Dr Kei­th Row­ley back­fired in 2015 and could cre­ate a pow­er­ful vic­tim, AGAIN. Of all per­sons to un­der­stand that tac­tic is Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar her­self. The cut and thrust of sol­id Par­lia­men­tary de­bates, reg­u­lar po­lit­i­cal cot­tage meet­ings on the ground, week­ly walk­a­bouts by MPs and coun­cil­lors and con­tin­u­ous par­ty ac­tiv­i­ties for the pur­pose of build­ing sup­port have been re­placed with re­treat and sub­terfuge. There is no move to uni­fy the com­pe­tent op­pos­ing forces, ei­ther.

It has de­gen­er­at­ed in­to lazy, pet­ty, de­featist politricks us­ing so­cial me­dia to spew slan­der and bac­cha­nal. In­fo com­ing out of the PNM camp claims it was a cook-up by the UNC lead­er­ship for PM Row­ley to get the sym­pa­thy vote and the ad­van­tage go­ing in­to the PNM’s up­com­ing in­ter­nal elec­tions, as it is build­ing up to be a fierce bat­tle with de­sire for change of lead­er­ship from with­in.

Last Fri­day, the labour unions held protest ac­tion against the Gov­ern­ment’s 4 per cent wage in­crease pro­pos­al and as they marched in PoS, the Op­po­si­tion held its Fam­i­ly Day and Cur­ry Duck Cook­out. In the past, the Op­po­si­tion has al­ways played a ma­jor role in join­ing and sup­port­ing the labour unions in their strug­gles and in turn, they have al­ways sup­port­ed the Op­po­si­tion. They sup­port­ed Op­po­si­tion Leader Per­sad-Bisses­sar in 2010 with the Fyz­abad Ac­cord and Op­po­si­tion Leader Row­ley in 2015 as one of the Round­table Stake­hold­ers. The UNC could have at least sent high-rank­ing rep­re­sen­ta­tives to sup­port. Cur­ry duck, horn and ab­sen­teeism may not be the best strate­gies to re­turn Per­sad-Bisses­sar to prime min­is­ter­ship.

I will con­tin­ue to urge all Trin­bag­o­ni­ans to stay fo­cused on the re­al is­sues. Sad­ly, our cur­rent lead­ers have trans­formed our pol­i­tics from a ve­hi­cle of change and hope to scan­dals, sen­sa­tion­al­ism and hope­less­ness. We should be more con­cerned that an elect­ed Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment does not know that San Fer­nan­do is a city than if some­one is get­ting horned.