- NEWSDAY.CO.TT - A la Une - 04/07/2024 06:31

Can't distinguish UNC from PNM

THE EDITOR: A new government will be inheriting a number of handicaps from this present PNM Government. Make a shortlist of priorities needing attention to see who could best address it effectively. 1. A police paradigm of intervention, stated or unstated, that is about shoot to kill is an extermination policy, not strictly policing. Gary Griffith may endorse it under the heading "one shot, one kill." 2. Not only are the nation's energy resources under the control of foreign corporations, but its energy destiny is being formed through Venezuela's fates with US policies and OFAC. 3. The sale of the refinery to a foreigner will play into this more not secure autonomy and set national interest first. 4. Moreover, foreigners have grown accustomed to having their sycophancies accommodated and having the government itself behave en mode. In other words, they are wont to put up a fight notwithstanding that they are headed down the same path Hugo Chavez took when he came to power and then Nicolas Maduro. Except now more than half of the world is moving out of US dollar assets. This is why there is so much spying going on and the harassment index is at an all-time high. 5. In the 1990s these matters were all meditated notionally and were dismissed. Now the Rowley Government is trying to actually concretise them and make them eternal legacy at any cost, viz balisier time capsule "88 years." Dr Rowley boasts he is the longest serving parliamentarian but it hasn't produced cohesive strength. 6. Retaking the resources and recharting industry concept will require national unity. 7. The idea that constitutional reform can solve any of this is nonsense. Adding "executive presidency" into it "recognised as an urgency" is superfluous. 8. It will be entirely open to any new government to reverse property tax, Revenue Authority, excessive registry requirements and the like; and end renegade lawsuits against bureaucrats who just do their jobs right – with only a simple majority, nothing special is needed for this. 9. But we do not want another government that is only giving what is its own constant unending hot talk with intrigues and fruits from those to keep it all endlessly going. 10. Whether the new government should be the UNC as it is at present or in some other formation, or a coalition with it of some kind, is hard to tell. That the UNC waited until this time to vote into the bail amendments doesn't necessarily distinguish it from anything (see point 1). E GALY via e-mail The post Can't distinguish UNC from PNM appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.