|
|
 |
Address by Winston Dookeran at El Dorado | | Election 2010 Campaign Speech | | Author: | | Date: 2010-04-29 08:04:02 |
| Thank you, thank you so much.
I believe on this occasion, I must first of all address the members of the Congress of the People who are here today. I know that, 3 years ago, when we embarked on this journey, it was a journey that we knew little about. I knew that there was some darkness ahead of us. But what you can say today, in the three years of the existence of the COP, there has never been a dull moment for you.
The time has come when we, once more, will be embarking on a new discovery in the politics of our country. It is the discovery that will bring the sense of salvation to our people. We started the road to seek a new freedom. We knew that our nation was imprisoned by the politics of the past. We knew that there were great hurdles to overcome, but we knew that we had to search for that freedom. Tonight I feel proud that I am seeing that freedom emerging in Trinidad and Tobago. And as I sit on this platform and listen to my colleagues, listen to David Abdullah, listen to Vasant Bharath, listen to Fuad Khan, and listen to your new member of parliament for St Augustine, Mr Prakash Ramadhar, I say to you that the new freedom is here.
I knew that, once our country became free, it shall unite itself. And now I speak not only to the COP members; I speak to all others in the audience here tonight; those who may have had their political preferences in the United National Congress, or those who may have their political preferences in the People's National Movement. I say to you here tonight what is at stake is not our individual parties, but our country itself. So my friends, we must move forward because Mr Manning's government has collapsed midterm. Are you prepared to revive and resuscitate a government that has collapsed midterm or are you prepared to start the freedom road once more and put a new government in place. That is the question. This is no ordinary election. The government has collapsed and when a government has collapsed, the people must rise to their freedom to put into place a new government to run the affairs of their country.
But we must not do so simply by responding to the opportunity, without establishing the rules of that engagement ahead of us. And that is why I say to you the opportunity has now come to us, where we can have the unification of this country - but a unification based on a principled approach to government. That is our challenge.
If we fail to hold our new government to the principles or the values of good governance, then we would have wasted our opportunity. And let us pledge here today to hold a new government that you would put in place to the principles of good governance.
This is but a beginning of that road to freedom. This is a period for jubilation, yes, but it is a period for solemn, solemn reflection. And where do we go from here?
I have decided to come, and to all my friends, and all my new friends that I will meet here in Tunapuna, to contest this seat in Tunapuna, because I want to prove to this nation that no seat is safe for the PNM. No seat is safe for the PNM, and that is the challenge that I have taken up in coming to Tunapuna. And you know my history: in all the challenges of my life, I have never taken the easy road. I've always taken the difficult road because I know it is by passing the difficult tests that you can reap the real rewards.
So to those of us, we live in Tunapuna. I have been living for some 30 years, a stone's throw away from here. It is like history has come to me, where I am returned to my own home to get my own freedom to serve my own country that will create freedom for all.
My friends, there has been a lot said about me in particular ... And Mr Manning, within this election, began to raise the issue about the weak leader, when I heard it for the first time, I said I forgive him for he does not know what he is saying. But when I heard him repeat this talk about the weak leader for the second time, I said I must feel sorry for him because he does not know how to distinguish between truth and falsehood. But when I heard him say it for the third time, I said now we must expose the strength of Mr Manning to establish who is a weak leader here in Trinidad and Tobago. We must expose the strength of Mr Manning that has put this society at risk, put our lives at risk, put our entire future at risk. That is the strength of Mr Manning.
It is the strength of Mr Manning that has put our democracy at risk, as he has done on so many occasions - hounding out the Chief Justice from office, and more recently, the fiasco with respect to the deportation order of one of the US citizens. That is the strength of Mr Manning. He has put the economy at risk, that everybody is saying now that when we start the process of governance, we will have hard times; the economy is once again at risk, the public finance is all over the place. That is a strong leader. My friends, to date, he has not explained his whereabouts in 1990, and that is a strong leader. To date, he has not explained why he tipped off Calder Hart to leave the country against the rules of good governance. And that is a strong leader. My friends, what I want to tell you that Mr Manning's strength, you see it in his actions.
The humble servant has always said that my strength lies inside of me, not outside of me. My strength comes from my deeds much more than my words. My strength comes from my patriotism and loyalty to my country and my people, Trinidad and Tobago, not to bastardize, not to betray them, not at any time to put them at risk. So let the people decide. Mr Manning wants to expose his strength - I am prepared to expose his strength for all to see, and let the people decide what is strength and what is weakness in Trinidad and Tobago from now on. And the election period is on and every time he comes to that statement from now on, you will see a new Dookeran on the platform, staring at him, telling him to go where he has to go... I cannot allow the people to be hoodwinked.
He is trying to hoodwink the people by saying that this coalition cannot work. He doesn't understand the philosophy behind the coalition. A coalition, as the name suggests, is the people's partnership. It is bringing together the political and social forces in this country. It is not bringing together the individuals for alone - it is bringing together the search for true independence, as reflected in the NJAC movement of the 1970's that is still alive today. And I pay tribute to them for staying alive today to lead the hope for true independence for Trinidad and Tobago.
It is effected by the Movement for Social Justice. It is a new organization coming out of an old historical desire to have equity in Trinidad and Tobago. And what we have in David Abdullah and Errol Mc Leod are the men who today lead this challenge for equity in Trinidad and Tobago, between the rich and the poor, and between all those who have had to suffer at the ..governance. It involves the United National Congress who has always been at the forefront of the fight for equality. Equality has been the call and tonight that social force for equality, that social force of equity, that social force of freedom in our independence period has come together with us in the Congress of the People, who have been fighting for the principles of good governance. What a formidable partnership that we have created, and even when the leaders go, the forces of unity will continue, because the freedom that we now have, we shall never give up. We shall search for a new Trinidad and Tobago.
That is why it was so easy for me to come together in this partnership and to say to Kamla Persad Bissessar, I shall support you to be the Prime Ministerial candidate in this election. We are the ones who started the one-to-one fight in Trinidad and Tobago. Long before people knew what we were saying, I said that we must have a one-to-one fight in Trinidad and Tobago. Today, that electoral necessity has been converted in to a people's partnership, which is now not only a one-to-one fight, but an "all fight", fight of all the people against one.
My friends, I don't know if the members of the COP have realized the political and social history that they have created. Do you know what I love about my party? What I love about my party, and many people don't understand it: we are a humble party. And it is on the basis of that value of humility that we have been able to put ourselves in a position that today, I will say all, including members of the People's National Movement, who trust this party and trust what we stand for and trust what we will stand for in years to come.
When I came here yesterday to meet my constituents for the first time, I was pleased that they know I am man with little talk and much action. So they gave me a plan for action for the people of Tunapuna - a 10 point plan for Tunapuna was given to me by the constituents who came here yesterday and they came from all walks of life.
I just want to outline the topics, not the proposal. The fathers in Tunapuna, the old age pensioners, the children, the fire services, the health needs, and the desire to have a modern hospital in Caura. The youths, the museum, the library and the recreational parks - this is the voice of the people who now feel free. When they look at their representative, they know that they now have to work with him to make this country and this constituency a better one.
That is what freedom is all about. Freedom is about your desire and your ability to develop your country, and what we shall do in economic terms is to ensure that we do not give development to the foreigners or the multinationals but that we put all development in the hands of the people. I am totally convinced that if the people are free and you put the responsibility for development to them, you don't need anybody else but yourselves to develop your country.
And that represents the difference in philosophy between us and Mr Manning's PNM. I say Mr Manning's PNM deliberately, because when the PNM was first established, and for many years, it was a party of a coalition of interests. I don't know how many of you know the history. You can have coalitions that are implicit or explicit, and in the early days, the PNM was a party of a coalition of interests. They brought together people from different religions; they brought together people from different geographies; they brought together people from different ideologies. That was the early period of independence. Coalition politics today is what the rest of the world is looking for. Even a country as large as India is governed by a coalition government of 13 parties. The new watchword in governance is inclusion, not exclusion. When Manning opposes coalition politics, he is in fact opposing inclusion, because he wants to exclude the people and leave him in charge.
Coalition politics is the modern way in which countries are now organizing their politics. For a collation - for a new government in Trinidad and Tobago. Always remember that you will be voting for a new government. My friends, don't let him side track you about coalitions cannot work or will not work. That is a puerile debate that only Mr Manning laughs at. What we are voting for is a new government that will be stable, that will be progressive, that will be sustainable. And you must call on your new government to be stable, to be sustainable, to be inclusive. You have a role to start charting the way your new government will operate. Do not give your new government the opportunity to run as they wish. My friends, the freedom that you now have must be used for the country and for the people. No more shall we have a dictatorship in a monolithic party because you cannot have a monolithic party as Mr Manning's party has turned out to be - a party that rests on the state for its existence. But are you prepared to accept dictatorship or do you wish to accept freedom?
The collation formula that we have worked out is a recipe based on the freedom of the people. Mr Manning's monolithic party is anchored in the need for a dictatorship, and hence his desire for an executive presidency. Those are the issues. When he calls for an executive presidency is because he wants the concentration of power on tap - when we call for a coalition of interests in this country it is because we want the people to always have that power.
But there's a lot of work to be done. There's a lot of work to be done and tonight, we can only start, because we can only build this political organization, this partnership into something that is sustainable and democratic and accountable to the people. Never give up on that challenge, and I give you the assurance that I will never give up on the challenge to hold my own party accountable - to hold my own party, always saying that you have to report to someone. The days for having dictatorship and maximum leaders are over - now is the days for us to run our affairs as a free society.
But an election is before us, and we must be, at all times, vigilant about the conduct of that election. Today, I obviously will not go into all the details that our chairman has been giving you from time to time - some of the tips that are required. I want to reiterate the call, in light of Mr Manning's deep desire to hold on to power at any cost: we must have international observers for this election from abroad and from the region...to be able to make assessment as to whether this election is conducted on the principles of freedom and fairness, and promotes the democracy. So I make that call again, and I hope that Mr Manning will heed that call because it is up to the Prime Minister and the government to make the requests to the international bodies. And I dare him now, tomorrow, to request on behalf of the people of this country, international observers to follow this election from now on, because we will leave no stone unturned.
Tonight is not a night to condemn Mr Manning's government. Tonight is a night to start building the new government of the future. I am conscious of the many challenges ahead of us, and I am very conscious particularly of the economic challenge ahead of us. All pundits have said that we are entering hard times. They say our economy is strong, and even though I agree with them from a statistical point of view, I say our economy is strong but our future is weak. And that is what I have to make sure. If Mr Manning has assured me he is a strong leader that he will make our economy and our future strong, it will take a weak leader like me to make our future strong.
And to that end, I have begun already to put together a monitoring team to look at the issues of public finance - whether we have any money or not. To look at the issues of the debts of the country - whether there is any scope for us to borrow and what is the burden of the present debt. To look at the issue of foreign reserves and to see whether we are depleting it at a rate that it will come sooner or later to an end. To look at the issue of the competitiveness of the economy because we have to start, as soon as we get into office, to inspire the confidence of the people and the investors and the business sector.
And to head that team I have asked a very well known person, someone who is highly respected in the field of economics to be the chairman of that team. He is no other person than a member, a professor, who has decided that he cannot stay into the walls of the university and allow himself to be buried in the university cemetery. He wants to be buried in the public cemetery of Trinidad and Tobago, and he has come out, he has come out - Dr Patrick Watson, who is the director of the Sir Arthur Lewis Institute, and a professor of applied economics and head of the unit of the economic team of the Congress of the People, has agreed to be coordinator of this economic monitoring unit, and shall report to me, to the partnership leadership in ten days as to the state of the economy. Because we are not about making wild promises. We are not about doing what Manning is doing: going one day and telling CEPEP workers that he will give them a raise and he isn't telling them where the money is coming from at all. And after the election, he will say "Boy, times, things are hard. Tighten your belt again". That is not the kind of governance that we are interested in and we make no promises. We simply make a commitment.
And our commitment to CEPEP workers that we will honour their contract with the government and do whatever we can to make them more productive, and to give them better terms. With respect to the old age pensioners, we will say that you have suffered at the hands of incompetent governance for too long, and it's your time now to get a little bit of the cake for the future. But all that will depend on the state of the economy and the actions we have before us. So when we talk about stable government, we talk about government that will deal with the real issues of governance, not gimmickry not converting government into creating clients of the state.
Well, my friends, the economic monitoring unit will get on with the job, and I hope sometime before this election, that we will announce clearly our directional path for this economy to bring our people forward, so that that future that I said is weak could at least begin to be strong again.
And you are well aware, we have had teams working on security. We have had teams working on the psychological needs of the country. We have had teams working on the issues of poverty. We have had teams working on the challenges in energy. No party in the history of this country has been better prepared to start the process of governance the day after the election.
So my friends, I end here today, I know time is against us by saying: now it is our time, and it is your turn. Two years ago, we knew we had a long battle, but we have been given a glorious opportunity. When Mr Manning thought he would get us in total disarray, he has provided an incentive for us to unite again. And I told him that, if you call a snap election, we shall make a snap response, and what I want to tell you today, we shall also have a snap victory. Are you ready, are ready, my friends? Could you raise it? Are you ready and would you get your friends ready, so that that victory will be ours? The freedom that you have got now, you shall use and never give it up again. And today, as I come here in El Dorado, we start our campaign for the Congress of the People. We start our campaign in the people's partnership, as we move forward to making sure our country remains free. Freedom to you, freedom to all, and let us ensure that we can win this election.
Thank you very much. Thank you very much.
| User Comments |   |
|
|
Home 
Home
About
Contact
Donate