Who is popular today?

THE EDITOR: The PNM has failed the people of TT once again. While it is seemingly hamstrung and unable to provide solutions to the plethora of problems plaguing the nation, Government officials are in the news handing out awards and houses every day to their supporters while significant issues remain unsolved.
Water woes continue to be the most critical and long-lasting problem that tens of thousands of people have learned to live with daily. Road maintenance just cannot be solved with cheap fixes using substandard solutions. The same goes for public water taps that have to be continuously fixed but do not stay working for long.
The ongoing problem of copper theft that has disrupted the telecommunication service of thousands of people is another seemingly intractable issue the Government is incapable of fixing. The president of the Scrap Iron Dealers Association, Allan Ferguson, has been begging the Government for months to work with his organisation to stop this debacle before it gets worse.
Still, the only solution that Prime Minister Rowley could come up with is shutting down the entire industry, risking employment for thousands of people in sectors such as shipping, export and food, with millions of foreign exchange dollars at stake.
This brings us to the crime situation. The police force (I used the word force instead of service deliberately, for that is how many people see it) is in a quandary in handling the surge in robberies and killings. Despite the numbers, the acting Commissioner of Police refuses to acknowledge that there is a problem.
Can Gary Griffith make a difference? He seems to think he can. But for things to change for the better, the underlying conditions must first be addressed. The ruling party cannot be seen as corrupt with zero accountability without influencing the entire population. When the people voted for two known evil entities, one for government and the other one for opposition, that gave young people, who commit most of the crimes, a carte blanche cheque to form their own crime syndicate – saying that “everyone thief” is no way to run a country. We have now become a nation of lawbreakers instead of a nation of laws.
The Opposition is of no use in this scenario as it has shown that during its five years in government, with every opportunity to fix all the woes the party of Eric Williams has wrought over the years, it allowed itself to be painted as corrupt. That, however, may be the one thing the PNM got right since it knows more about corruption than others.
The Government’s quick-fix solution to a problem it cannot benefit from politically is to close it down to “save taxpayers money” and to hell with the long-term impact on livelihoods. Petrotrin, Caroni and so many other government-controlled industries fell to the ax when keeping them going would have placed the country better off financially and security-wise in the long run.
The PNM Government cannot be allowed to hold certain areas for ransom because they voted for another party. If a fixed sum is allocated to regional corporations in the central government’s budget, withholding or delaying that money is inexcusable. The UNC-controlled corporations have suffered from this for years.
Now let us see if Tobago will also face the same fate now that the PNM has lost all but one of the Tobago seats. Will it receive the funds it needs to make Tobago the paradise it was meant to be, or will the THA budget be watered down, with the Government crying about a paucity of funds.
The unions are of little value. They had a great opportunity when they partnered with the UNC during the People’s Partnership debacle. However, the union leaders’ quest for power saw them squandering a unique opportunity to be relevant on a national scale.
They are now back to wasting their members’ time and money by only being relevant to their members. So, every election, they swing back and forth between supporting the PNM or the UNC. They go with the party that promises the most gold.
So, what is a disillusioned person to do? Many people have thrown up their hands and given up voting altogether. To fix that and make the country whole again, we must invite all the citizens to participate in the solution by voting, not with the current state of the Election and Boundaries Commission that will have you jump through hoops to register, but using simply any government-issued ID, such as a birth certificate, a driver’s permit, or an official ID Card.
The ink-stained finger is the ultimate proof that you can only be permitted to vote once. We want the people to get more involved, not less.

REX CHOOKOLINGO

rexchook@gmail.com
The post Predicament of voters appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.