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WINSTON DOOKERAN’S SPEECH National Joint Action Committee’s Conference- People’s Governing Council Meeting Sunday 18th October 2009 La Joya Complex St. Joseph | | | Author: Winston Dookeran | | Date: 2009-10-19 00:00:00 |
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WINSTON DOOKERAN’S SPEECH
National Joint Action Committee’s Conference- People’s Governing Council Meeting
Sunday 18th October 2009
La Joya Complex
St. Joseph
My friends, it was in 1969 when I first met, who has now turned out to be your Chief servant. It was in a little room in Port of Spain, when I as a young man then, decided that I will respond to the forces of idealism and went to a meeting of the Pegasus club in Fredrick street POS, this evening I say to Chief Servant Makandal Daaga, thank you very much for that meeting, which has turned out to us coming together once more for the interest of the peoples of Trinidad and Tobago.
The movement that you have sustained for all these many years against all trials and tribulations and against all expectations for remaining alive is something that has inspired us. it is the coming together of the ideas of the past and the expectations of the future why we are here today, and I thank you for the opportunity to address you in what I hope will turn out to be an historic movement in the evolution of the politics of Trinidad and Tobago.
The NJAC movement has not only been a reflection of the conscience of the people of Trinidad and Tobago, but indeed of the Caribbean and the new world. It is in that context of the new world movement I speak to you today on what are some of the new directions that our nation must embark upon.
I want to speak on a very fundamental issue, the very issue of development. I understand exactly where you have come from. In preparation for being here today, a good friend of mine brought a document that the older ones around you may remember.
The People’s Declaration of Policy for development of a new Trinidad and Tobago was published in 1981. What came to mind as I read this document is the similarities between what you embarked upon some 40 years ago for a new Trinidad and Tobago to what we have embarked upon some three years ago for a new Trinidad and Tobago.
This is a document worthy of totally reconsideration by all of the people of Trinidad and Trinidad today, as it was then.
I will like to focus on what are some of the real challenges ahead of us. It is no point talking about what has gone wrong, because talking does not make right anymore, it is time for action to make it right. So let me talk very briefly about where we are, and how we must proceed in order to shape the paradigm to take us out of this State of Emergency. It was in the 1980s that I became fully involved in the public life of this country and had the responsibility to chart a path for economic independence.
Some of you may remember the document which the government of that day, of which I was minister of planning, presented to the nation and to the parliament; it was called the economics of reconstruction and independence. It was search that has been among us for a long time but it has been a search that has not resulted in the real independence of our nation. We started the phase one of that programme by trying to bring about what was called macro stability.
Soon we found that phase one was not delivering any public goods in the area of poverty, income distribution or equal opportunities. It was but a necessary steps but it was an insufficient step to the fundamental changes to our society’s economic future. So we moved into the second phase, where we began to focus on the institutions, saying that policies alone will not work, unless you have institutions, whose values are so determined, whose philosophical underpinning is so derived that they will understand their purpose and their need for performance. Even the second phase came to an abrupt end and we had to undergo the political reaction to a future by a very hard and difficult darkness in the parliament of our country in 1990; not derived by any philosophical intent like NJAC has but from a mere opportunistic expectation on the part of one or two individuals. But that had brought an end in my view to the process of economic restructuring and the search for economic independence. Since then both the politics and the economic are back to first times. The issue of race in politics have once more dominated and has today remain perhaps, the most important cancer that we must get rid off if we want to build a new Trinidad and Tobago. The issue of returning governance to the people of this land and having our institutions account to our people and our nation is our primary responsibility to protect our democracy and our freedom in our land. For almost 20 years those who have been in charge of the leadership of this country have either formed themselves into cabals or cartels in order to run against the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
The first question that we must pose is: are the forces of underdevelopment stronger than the forces of development? And what you have said and what we have said and what we have seen in this country today is that in reality, the forces of underdevelopment are much stronger than the forces of development. And if you were to preside over the forces underdevelopment like the present government is doing that we the people must make the verdict clear that we have elected you, not to preside over the forces of under-development but to preside over the forces of development in Trinidad and Tobago.
And when we heard what we heard there today, we are very clear that the fundamental question that we must ask in technical terms is could we broaden the development that will take place without high growth rate? In a real sense that is what we are talking about, because we have believed that high growth rate and high buildings is a substitute for real development in Trinidad and Tobago. Development and take place without high growth rates if it is based on fundamental precepts of governance on one hand and on the requirement of our people to hold our governments accountable.
Where we all fail as a people, is because today, we refuse to hold our governments accountable for what they have done. It is clear that much work has to be done. The question of development raises the thesis; (market forces have always worked against the true realization of development with equity), on a global scene, a regional scene and a domestic scene. So we must address that issue from the front and while we operate within the framework of our market system, it is very clear that the reliance on the market forces will not bring about development in agriculture, nor will it bring a reduction in our crime level, for there, the criminal industry is allowed to grow at a faster rate than the economy itself.
So my friends I want to put forward the thesis that development cannot be imported. And whatever we do must design a framework, a paradigm to ensure that development must not based on the presumption that it can be imported and that is why we could spend all these funds that we are spending, millions and billions of dollars of ours and the next generation’s money to import development that will never happen in Trinidad and Tobago.
It is not simply a matter of high buildings, grandiose schemes, satisfying the wimps and fancies of someone who does not understanding the difference between development and geology in Trinidad and Tobago.
A recent World bank report (2008), where they spoke about the strategy for sustained growth and inclusive development. Inclusive development has become the hall mark of the requirements of a democracy. And what we call inclusive development in our country, are simply cash dispensing machineries to fool the young people in our nation, that they are being given opportunities that they themselves know will not last until tomorrow when the cash is over. So we need to get deep into this process of inclusive development. So when we do programmes in the interest of poverty, they can’t be programmes that talk about the public relations of poverty but programmes that will undo the cycles of poverty that keeps poverty alive in the nation, because each generation will see the emergence of a new cycle of poverty, if you only treat the symptoms. We need therefore to go deeper into our development challenge but we now facing a more difficult situation for the very resilience of small economies like ours are being put to the test by the global dimensions of changes that are taking place on the international platforms. Even there our governments have said, don’t worry because the recovery is coming and we will be back to normal. But is back to normal where we want to go, where there is so much social disorder, where corruption is being hidden, and crime is on the rise? When we were going down, they said don’t worry we are not going down, and when we went down, they said don’t worry we will come back up again. It is the act of a geologist talking about oil, not a leader talking about developing the nation.
So my friends I attended a conference very recently in Waterloo, Canada. It was called the “search for a new deal for the global economy” and one of the most interesting speakers was a Brazilian professor from Harvard University who said: recovery to what? The question is recovery to what?
Is it a recovery where we can have consolidation of the riches of the past without the distribution for the benefits of the poor? Is it a recovery where there shall be no link between finance and production? So that the finance sector can become rich and have large profits and production sector can become poor and have low production because there is no link. The first thing we must do is to start back that march in front of Royal Bank of Canada to make finance and production work together for the benefit of this nation.
Is it recovery to a dollar reserve currency, or is a recovery to a new currency arrangement of the world? Are we ready to adjust to that or are we going to boast about how much reserves in the bank now and expect that that will remain there in the future when the entire world of currency arrangement is changing upon us? Is that any foresight on a government which has now lost everything about looking into the future because they have been conditioned in a philosophy, which is a philosophy of the past.
So my friends, these are the broad framework of the challenges ahead of us.
There is a sense today that something is amiss but there appears to a danger ahead to correct what is amiss. The forces of repression is what we are facing up to, And I want to join with you to fight the forces of repression that is ahead of us. That repression is taking place by closing off commissions of inquires, and by saying that anyone who dares to attack the system will be intimidated in one way or the other.
The forces of repression has already began to show its head, not because Mr. Manning knows what he is doing, because he doesn’t even understand that he himself is repressor in this country, it is because that is the way political systems work. The political systems work in a way that those that are in charge will move into repression without understanding that is what they are doing. And they will do it in the name of democracy; everything that will repress the democratic rights of the people is going to be done in the name of democracy and freedom. That is how political systems that have lost their way and cannot serve the fundamental interest of the people behave and there is no difference, this is how our political system will behave and we must be prepared to deal with it to prevent them from carrying us into despair.
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| NJAC member
Well said Mr. Dookeran. I was present at the council meeting and I very much enjoyed taking in your presentation and that of your deputies Ramadhar and Mayers. You have my full support as we join together under a common purpose to take T&T forward.
Love. |
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