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Address by Winston Dookeran in Diego Martin | | Election 2010 Campaign Speech | | Author: | | Date: 2010-05-05 18:05:35 |
| Thank you, thank you so much, people of Diego Martin and my friends in Trinidad and Tobago.
The moment is here. Victory is there. The society is about to be freed again, and a new government will be installed in this land of ours on May 25th, 2010.
It did not happen by mistake. Your presence, your persistence, your perspiration here in Diego Martin was a beacon of light for the rest of Trinidad and Tobago as we continued that road to where we are today.
I want to say a special word of appreciation to one person from the Diego Martin constituency, for being with us on this journey for all these years. And I say to Mr Joe Pires, thank you for what you have done for the people of Diego Martin.
As I listened to young Rudolph, I knew that a child has been born, a star has begun to be seen, and I thank Rudolph for his inspiring speech of the young people here today. Because I've always felt that Trinidad will be saved by the young generation of this country and that is what the ... best example of ... And today I make a special appeal to the young people of this country: "Come forth, come together, let us free our country. Let us start with the new government and let us move beyond to build a Trinidad and Tobago of which we can be proud."
It did not happen by mistake. After the 2007 election, when you came with great expectations, and our system did not allow us to find that victory. We reflected and we understood that our democracy was being hostage by two gatekeeper. One was stealing the government and the other was stealing the opposition. I knew if I break one of them, the other one has to fall as well. So when we in the Congress of the People at our annual convention this year invited Mrs Kamla Persad Bissessar to come to our convention, we started the process of breaking up one of the gatekeepers of this country and now we are in the process of breaking up the other one come May 24th.
It didn't happen by mistake because the society had recognized that our nation was being called a failed nation. Even the president, when he used to talk, said that the nation was on the edge of being called a failed state. And what is a failed state? A failed state is a state in which the security of the state can no longer be enforced by the government. A failed state is a state in which the institutions of government have been prostituted for the protection of corruption. A failed state is a state when the agencies of government cannot provide the goods for the people in health or anywhere else. That is the definition of a failed state and we were moving in that direction. The people understood that. They felt it and they began to rise in order to be able to come out of this and provide a safe haven for our people.
That is where we have come from. Mr Manning had five years. He had a glorious opportunity. He squandered it and, in the end, this government collapsed. And when the government collapsed, it was because the pressures of the failed state became too enormous for him. It reflected itself in many different ways. But his government collapsed mid-term and it is now left for the people to find a new government to take us forward.
And that is why we began the process of building the unification of our land. It was always our dream. It was always our vision. But now we had get down to brass tacks.
And little by little, we began to build that coalition of interests. We recognized that there are many interests in this land of ours. And unless we brought it together in a unified way, we will never be able to deliver to the next generation what you want most: a country in which each person, whether he be Hindu, a Muslim, a Christian, whether he be African, Indian or other, European or whatever it may be, must be treated equally before the state in Trinidad and Tobago. And that is what we have been fighting for. No longer will we allow ourselves to be divided on the basis of ethnicity. No longer must we allow ourselves to be divided on the basis of caste. We must come together. And we have been saying this. But after November 2007, we learned that we had to accelerate the process. And today, when we bring the forces together in the People's Partnership, it is not the bringing together of the leaders. It's bringing together the social forces of the country. The UNC have always been arguing for equality of treatment. The Movement for Social Justice is an old story with a new organization in search of social justice. The National Joint Action Committee have said that our independence had gone wrong and they wanted to put it back on track. The Tobago Organisation of the People have been searching for a new relationship within Trinidad and Tobago in the governance. And the Congress of the People have been fighting for unification of the people and good governance for the society.
So we constructed a unification. The reason I know that it will endure is because it does not depend on the leaders, it depends on the people to keep it together. And I know the people today are not going to give away this victory that you are about to have. And I know that you will not allow your leaders to take you on to any path that will put at risk what you have created in the last three years. You know that, I know that, the people here know that, and that is why it will endure.
Mr Manning's view that coalitions do not work is an expression of his own sense, of not understanding that even in his own party there is a major set of divisions. The PNM was once a coalition party. In the 1960s, Dr Eric Williams brought all the forces together in a covenant. But since then it has changed course and now the PNM is owned by Patrick Manning and he wants to use the state to force himself onto the people for all time.
My friends, no more of that. We cannot allow our government to be owned by anyone. We cannot allow our government to be put in a place where corruption can be hidden. It took a few of us and, more particularly, Mr Vernon De Lima and Mr Timothy Hamel Smith - two of the best legal minds in this country, who are committed and loyal, to open the door to expose what has been happening in the field of corruption .
Mr Jeremie had commission upon commission. You only hearing them setting up commissions but you never hear what the commissions say. They were hiding corruption in this country and we will open the lid so that they people shall be free again and we can have a clean government in Trinidad and Tobago. And today, I say here in Diego Martin that, in the new government that we will create, we shall not tolerate any form of corruption that imposes upon the people a burden that we see here today. And I have already began to work on the ways in which we can find the structures in governance to protect the people against our own leaders.
So my friends, it did not happen by mistake and it will not happen by mistake. But we must make no mistake about this: we have to get rid of Mr Manning and the PNM come May 24th. Our democracy was locked up. Freedom of speech was being curtailed. Fear was rampant in the society. And when we went around, what we found was people people shoo-shooing. "I support you, you know, but I can't show it." And I say, "This is a democracy." And I said to myself, "With all the zeal I have left, I'll find the formula with my colleagues to free our country so that they can express their political views freely, regardless of what they are. Without consequences, we shall not be free in Trinidad and Tobago. So our democracy was locked up by the gatekeepers and by the system. And I decided with my colleagues that we have to unlock that democracy. But I also realised to unlock that democracy, I have to lock up a lot of people in the process.
But we must now look ahead. We have 21 days in which we shall have to come out in full force. And we must, in this entire country, stand up for that search for that freedom. I know you will but I am just urging upon you: let us not to make a single mistake in the next 21 days.
But why are we doing that? Because we want to build a society that is different and to build a government that can perform. I have said that government must work for the people. The people must not work for the government. Right now, they are calling on the people to work for the government in keeping it there. I am saying you have to make the choice: your government must work for you rather than you must work to keep your government there. Unless you make that leap of thinking, we will forever become victims of a system that has lost its legitimacy. So my friends, let us make our government work for people.
And let me, in the few moments I have here, outline two areas in which we have already worked out our plans. One is with respect to the health sector. Today, at the press briefing, we outlined our plan for the country to hear, in which we said that all the ills of the health sector have already been made known to the government. When they had the commission of enquiry into health and the Gafoor Report, as it has been called, was laid in Parliament. That was three years ago and they did nothing about it. So all the ills remain as they are. Would you tolerate a government who knows what it has to do and refuses to do it?
My friends, today we talked about the system, which forces our people to wait for everything. All our public institutions promoting health is a waiting game. Dr Jovaan referred to that today as a nation of waiters. We have to change that and we have to provide healthcare for our people on an immediate basis, and we can do that. We know that we go to hospitals abroad or our families would have gone and it is almost as if it is a hotel. Sometimes you don't really want to leave it. But in our case, when we go into our hospitals, we realize that we have to hold our noses and hope for the best - that we will come out better than we went it.
So my friends, we know that the resources that we have to spend on health care must be increased. Right now it's 4% of the revenue. Instead of using our money to build palaces and high buildings and so forth, we shall direct the expenditure, to raise it to 8% so that the healthcare system will have the resources to handle its problems. And that is what I mean when I say we shall re-order our expenditure so that the people's interest will be given the highest priority. I am not interested in the symbols of development; I am only interested in the substance of development. And that's the difference between the PNM and us.
We shall have a new plan with a partnership between the private sector and the public sector. We shall not treat each other as competitive. We shall regulate the private sector so that they can provide high quality healthcare. And we shall put into place a financial scheme so that is shall be affordable to all. And we shall make it affordable to all by ensuring that there is fully accessible medical healthcare to all the people of this country. The details of this you will hear more of, but we have already put that in place.
Vernon de Lima talked about a security plan. We have worked it out, how we go about that. Tonight I couldn't go into that. But an area that has been bothering a lot of people, and they have been writing to me, are the policy holders of Clico, because they have been left in limbo. And they want to know how we should handle that problem. My friends, when the Clico fiasco burst, I then said that government was on the wrong track. What was at risk was a cash flow problem in the Clico investment bank, and a problem in the Clico company with respect to their prudential requirements, as it is called. In other words, if you are treating a patient and that patient has as a problem with one finger and with the other finger, you don't ignore the problems with the fingers and treat the whole body and put the body at risk. And that is what they did. They put the entire economy at risk. Put the people at risk and the entire Caribbean economy is at risk because they took the wrong decision in handling the Clico affair. Having done that, we have found that there is a hole of 15 billion dollars that they have to meet. They have only allocated five billion dollars so far. And the people and the policy holders have been left to wonder. They gave verbal assurances that the commitment to the Clico policy holders would be honoured but, my friends, there is no plan to honour it. It is words. We have worked out the plan, my economics team, headed by Dr Patrick Watson, and we will be releasing very shortly all the aspects of the economic plan. They have worked out the plan to set up a different company so that we can bring the good things together and provide security for the future and growth, and we shall use some method to ensure that we can find the funding for the 15 billion dollars.
No promises. Only action which we can do. We are going to be a government that will only promise things that we intend to do, not things that we intend to fool people with.
So I invite you here, and I invite the entire country, to look as these details, and to assure you that it is only on this partnership platform, it is only here that you can have the necessary knowledge, commitment and loyalty to handle the problems of governance.
I have told my colleagues, let us not talk about how the PNM bad anymore because the whole country knows that already. Let us talk about how we going to take this country forward with new plans, new ideas and new commitment. How we going to bring about political reform where we are going to curtail the powers of the Prime Minister, so the Prime Minister cannot become a maximum leader. There is always the temptation for people, given our situation, to become maximum leaders as Mr Manning has done and wants to become Executive President. We shall restructure true political reform - a system that ensures that the coalition of interests becomes the dominant decision-making process in the country.
It did not happen by mistake where we are, and it will not happen by mistake where we have to go. So tonight, as you come here in your numbers, and I must say, I don't think I have ever attended a meeting in Diego Martin as large and as energetic and as powerful as this here. And I must say our candidates are candidates whom you can be proud of. On the stage today, we have Verna St Rose Graves - a new and powerful person in the country. We had Giselle Russell. We have had Gavin Nicholas. But we had the two candidates for this area, whom you know already, who came here two years ago, two and a half years ago and inspired you and energized you, so that Diego Martin became the place that the entire country is looking at. When the Congress of the People got between five and six thousand votes in what was considered to be PNM stronghold, the country stood up and said, "Diego Martin, lead us towards the promised land."
And today, we are fortunate to have returning on this platform, Nicole Dyer-Griffiths, who will be your next representative this time around, make no mistake about it. Let us go the whole hog, let us walk every step of the way to get Nicole Dyer-Griffiths into parliament. I told you the last time I was here that I will be the happiest man if I could have been in parliament and welcomed Nicole into the chambers of parliament. And I am going up for the seat of Tunapuna so that I can do it again.
But you heard Rocky Garcia. If there was a man who was committed to the people and whose heart is in the people's business in Trinidad and Tobago, in my many years of political life, I have never found someone so committed to his people, his people in Diego Martin and elsewhere as Rocky Garcia. You are the champion of the ordinary people in this country. You see, you don't have to worry about principles because you live your life and your heart in support and in service of the people.
What debate goes on between Mr Manning and Mr Rowley, I don't know where it will end. But wherever it ends will not be in the interest of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. Rocky Garcia will be in the interest of the people of Trinidad and Tobago. And I ask you here to come and rise to give him that chance. Look at this crowd that he has brought here in Diego Martin West. This is just a manifestation of the work he has done and I have absolutely no hesitation whatsoever in saying to you that the best representative that will come from Diego Martin West, my friends who are here, the young people in the new generation, will be Rocky Garcia. We need an upset victory. The moment is here. The victory is here. The freedom of the people is about to be grasped. The new government is about take place, but the rest depends on you, whether it will happen or not. All of you who are here, each one of you must become a canvasser in your own right. Each one of you must get out into the fields, don't make any mistake this time. Let us get there. Let us all mobilize ourselves in a way we have never done so that we can have that freedom I'm talking about.
So I want to ask you: are you ready to take on the challenge ahead of you? Are you ready to install a new government in Trinidad and Tobago?
My friends, let me end by telling you that our failure to do so will be a responsibility that our children will never be able to forgive us for.
Thank you. Thank you. Thank you.
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