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Address by Mr. Winston Dookeran - Constantine Park Macoya | | Election 2010 Campaign Speech | | Author: | | Date: 2010-05-17 11:05:14 |
| My people of Tunapuna, my people of Trinidad and Tobago, let us declare in one voice, right now, that Kamla Persad-Bissessar will be the next Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.
The expectations are high; there is electricity on the ground. As I walked through this crowd this afternoon, I almost was brought to tears of joy for what has happened to our people in Trinidad and Tobago. Finally, alas, we shall shake up the politics of Trinidad and Tobago and we shall start the road of building a new society in this nation of ours.
So we must start our business as from tonight. In eight days to come a People's Partnership government shall be installed by the President of this country, to be your next government and you are the ones who have brought it about.
For three long years we have stood up one by one and we have said enough to the politics of the past, you embrace wholeheartedly the challenge of getting our politics right. You know it is only by so doing you shall bring new ideas to our nation, you shall bring new leadership to our people, you shall bring new politics to our society and you shall do that at this time, the new time, for Trinidad and Tobago, for our people.
And that is why we are here tonight. We are here so that we can put a country back on track as we embrace the 2010 manifesto of the People's Partnership. It is entitled "Prosperity for All". I come to you here tonight as the candidate for the constituency of Tunapuna.
Tunapuna is the anchor of the East-West corridor in Trinidad and Tobago. In the same way that the Berlin wall fell in Germany to bring about the unification of Germany, so too shall Tunapuna come to the Congress of the People and break down the walls of division that have kept our country apart.
This victory in Tunapuna shall have effects all over this land, the domino effect, as we move this victory in the East, in Tobago and in Diego Martin in Trinidad and Tobago as well.
Today we are embracing the politics of inclusiveness. This is the politics that has been embraced throughout the world in the 21st century and Mr. Manning wants you to embrace his politics of exclusion. We are accepting the politics of inclusion in Trinidad and Tobago and we shall be rejecting the politics of exclusion for the 21st century.
We must engage a politics that will include all. Not only those who form the People's Partnership, but those PNM supporters who do not wish to support Manning's PNM, I say to them come on board and let us build a new Trinidad and Tobago, let us build a new vision for our society.
This is the hope; this is why you are here tonight. This is the reason why we have toiled so hard for the last three years. This is a chance that Mr. Manning in consulting his prophetess decided to give us by calling this snap election and this is a chance that we will not give away at all.
I said to you once that if Mr. Manning were to call a snap election, we shall have a snap response. And what you have seen emerging in the People's Partnership is the snap response. But now I want to tell you that we will now move on to having a snap victory in Trinidad and Tobago. The Prime Minister has said that the PNM will stand alone, win alone, and lose alone. Well, for once he is right. This time around Mr. Manning's PNM will lose alone and the people of Trinidad and Tobago will win.
You know my people that I have never been afraid of challenges. You know that I do not get involved in mock battles. Like Mr. Rowley and Mr. Manning are involved in mock battles in Trinidad and Tobago. They are not fooling anyone but themselves, and the people of Trinidad and Tobago know that that is a mock battle, and that is not a real battle. Filled with contradictions and filled with hypocrisy, it is not a battle that satisfies the criteria of truth. The country knows it - the protestations of one and denials of the other are not being believed by our county. I have never been involved in mock battles, but when I fight, I fight real battles in defence of the people of Trinidad and Tobago.
And I am here again to take on a real battle. I am here once again to take on the battle for my country's freedom. The freedom from the corruption we know about; the freedom from Calder Hart, wherever he is; the freedom from fear - which they are using in our society today; the freedom from Martin Joseph from all his many plans; the freedom from nepotism and finally, alas, freedom from Patrick Manning as Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago.
So when it is the will of the people to give me the right to represent you in the next parliament of Trinidad and Tobago here in Tunapuna, you are also giving many others in the East-West corridor that opportunity. You shall be giving Anna Maria Mora from Arouca, Maloney the chance to be in parliament. You shall be giving Dr. Lincoln Douglas from Lopinot/Bon Air West the chance to be in parliament. You shall be giving Rodger Samuel in Arima the chance to be the next parliamentarian, and you shall be giving Anil Roberts the chance to be your candidate in D'Abadie/O'Meara. Anil threatens to be the most feared parliamentarian that there ever will be in Trinidad and Tobago.
And when you do that, those of us in the East-West corridor will no longer be called PNM territory because we are now going to be Congress of the People territory in Trinidad and Tobago. And we shall break down the gates that have kept our country divided. And we shall break down the gates that have kept our country undeveloped, and we shall break down the gates that have kept our country with a sense of hopelessness. These five seats of the East-West corridor, the new COP territory in Trinidad and Tobago, are going to make the difference for the new government of the People's Partnership.
So my friends, you know what you have to do. It is not simply going out to vote, but it is to bring victory and history to the people of the East-West corridor.
We are searching for an upset victory for those who believe the country will remain where it was. And we know we shall have an upset victory here because we know the country is not where it was, but the country is where it wants to go.
I understand Mr. Manning has said "You know what you have, don't vote for what you do not know".Yes the people know what they have, and they damn well want to get rid of that and vote for something new.
So my friends, today is almost over. The shouting and the barraging is over, the damned lies are over. Their falsehood has been exposed, redress have come and gone. The nation is now bewildered. It is at a standstill not knowing what to do.
Their leaders have betrayed their confidence, the trust of our people in our leadership is at an all-time low and here one week before the elections, the people understand that this country is at a standstill.
And for those who are at the middle of that standstill I say to you, think deep, think about your children ahead of you, think about the desires within you, think about, my friends, about the future of the young people in our nation.
So let us start the business of government from now on. We are about to engage in a serious effort to bring our country back on track. We must build the partnership of the varying interests in our country, on a wide range of national issues - safety and security, economic development, justice and wellbeing of our citizens, and introduce the new face for governance in our beloved country.
All this we have expressed in our manifesto and I shall kiss it like Mr. Manning did.
Our vision is not for 2020, it is a vision for today for a better tomorrow. That is why our manifesto reflects the rejection of bad governance and the acceptance of good governance and that is the choice before us. No society anywhere in the world will accept to put back in a government that has been successful in offering you bad governance, and reject a party that is giving you the prospect of good governance. You see my friends, on every indicator of public accountability, the government has failed. You know it, you feel it, and that's why you are here in your thousands, and that's why so many in this country are now listening to the People's Partnership.
The choice is straightforward. The new framework of sustainable development is to be built upon seven interconnected pillars and I want to go through it with you quickly.
The first pillar has to do with philosophy. And it says that the first claim on a people's government is to satisfy the basic needs of the people. What are those basic needs? Good water systems, good health care, good education, good irrigation, whatever it be, in transport, your focus will be on the basic needs of people. The reason why there is so much discontent in our land, everyday, everywhere there is some protest, some complaint, something is happening because our country is in a great stage of discontent because the basic needs of the country have been given second place to the high buildings, to the palaces, to the summits, and to all those things in the sky, like the blimp - we intend not to build this country from the sky, we intend to build this country from the people.
The second pillar of our seven pillars is to deal with the root causes of our problems in social justice and more specifically among the poor in this society. You see, Mr. Manning addresses the symptoms of poverty, we intend to address the cycles of poverty so the next generation will be less poor than the previous generation, because we know the inheritance we give to our people is all that we can do to allow them to live a better life.
Gone are the days when all these so-called poverty eradication programs are really vote-getting programs, now we shall embrace a serious attack to eradicate poverty and income distribution in this country.
The third pillar upon which our manifesto has been built has to do with the issue of public safety, much has been said about that, and may I take the opportunity once more to say a word of gratitude to Timothy Hamel-Smith and Vernon De Lima for exposing to this country, what this country knew but it took them the courage to do it..; Members of the COP, now members of the People's Partnership as they bring safety and corruption under control.
The fourth pillar is to embrace the global opportunities for our young people, in particular, and to engage us in the dynamic program of Information Technology as we get into the information age, our young people cannot be satisfied with having a job that does not allow them to get the full potential as young, bright people of Trinidad and Tobago. We must open up the global arena. We must move into all those industries so that they can have a chance for a better life. This is the challenge of the information age.
Our fifth pillar is to move away from Manning's development model that is based on unbridled industrialisation, which is based on the use of foreign direct investment alone. We shall soon change the development model by saying that development cannot be imported, development resides in the people of this country, and development must start with the people of this country, and then we shall move to the other areas.
You see, that is why there is so much discontent, because of the skewed development model and as the years move on, as the financial situation in the world changes, we will expose for all to see the paucity of that model. Unbridled industrialisation has lead to what some people refer to as financial terrorism as we begin to embark on putting this country in debt for the future generation to repay it.
The sixth pillar has to deal with our approach to government in the 21st century. Not a government that hides corruption, not a government that kicks out a Chief Justice from office without even apologising, notwithstanding the Mustill report.
Not a government or a Prime Minister that sits back and by his action and his inaction decides that corruption is alright in Trinidad and Tobago. My friends, I said recently how shall we pay for all we want to do in the promise ahead of us? I say it again here today, it is not a financial issue, it's an issue of the values of the leadership in this country and until the values of the leadership in this country change there will be no solution to all the problems we have.
They have violated all the fundamental values of a democratic life. You know it, you see it, and Mr. Manning boasts about it, the most recent of course is his broadcast tonight where he commanded all the television stations to forget everybody else and give him free broadcast tonight and tomorrow night and does not offer that same facility to the opposition forces in this country. That is a denial of the fundamental right of freedom of information in an election period.
And our seventh pillar is to endure that we can restore our international image abroad. In every capital of the world, the image of Trinidad and Tobago has dropped. He thought that he shall have summits to improve the international image; all he got from the summit is a photograph with President Barack Obama. That was the benefit of Trinidad and Tobago from those summits.
I know that our new Prime Minister will get such a photo in a business meeting in Washington at the most appropriate time and will not have to spend all that money to get a photo opportunity with the president of the United States because we are going to approach governance as a business.
So my friends, it is based on those pillars that we move forward. But we move forward with a fundamental view of government. In this country many people are being called upon to make the government work for them, they want to keep the government in place, they are exploiting the fears of our people by saying if you do not exercise your rightful choice, your job will be at stake, in other words, they are saying that the people must work to keep a government in office - that is the philosophy of theirs.
I want to tell you as from today onwards, we must not do that; we must make government work for the people.
And there is a danger ahead of us. Mr. Manning's constitution proposals are a recipe for further concentration of power in the hands of an executive presidency, when the opposite is what is required. Because what we need in the 21st century democracy is a redistribution of power from the Prime Minister to the parliament. So we shall remove the veto power of the Prime Minister and put it in the elected representatives of the people in the parliament. What we need is a redistribution of power from the State to the citizens.
What we need is a redistribution of power from the bureaucrats to the people, so in our health care proposals, the patient's right shall be the primary right the doctors, the administrators and others will not be the bosses, the patients shall be the bosses in the hospitals from now on.
There is no doubt that Manning's draft constitution has raised alarm bells all over the world and they are looking at this election with great interest, not only with respect to its outcome, but whether or not the people of this country are going to accept that kind of imposition on the democracy of our land.
So I say to you here today, let this election not only win us the government, but let this election deal with the Manning constitution which is the constitutional dagger to the heart of our democracy. And let us use this as the referendum to vote out that constitution and those proposals and I call to all Trinidad and Tobago to accept the challenge to convert this election into a referendum and Manning's imposition of a constitution that will deny us our democracy. That is a serious matter.
But consider all of you this is a referendum, go out and cast your vote, not only to vote them out, to reject Manning's proposal for constitutional change in Trinidad and Tobago and allow the People's Partnership to come forth with a new program.
I repeat the call again. The 2010 election of May 24th must be viewed by all those within the PNM and outside the PNM as a rejection of Manning's proposals of constitutional reform, and this is a referendum that will allow them to vote against Mr. Manning's constitution because that is bigger than the party in power.
If that constitution were to find its place in the statue books of our land, we will have to sit back as sitting ducks in the future because our freedom would have been curtailed and our opportunity to live in a true democratic would have been curtailed. It is said he called the election so that he could get the few more votes needed to change the constitution. So my friends, little did he realize, instead of getting a few more votes to change the constitution, he will get a few less votes to get him out of office. The choice is between repressive politics and constitutional dictatorship, or the freedom for all of us in this democracy of ours.
Think especially those from the People's National Movement, they are people who have played an important role in the development of this country in the past, they continue to be an integral part of this nation, they continue to have an interest in the future of this nation, the time has come when you must put the nation's interest, and the country's interest above Mr. Manning's interest, and this is a time - if you don't do that my friends - then you will be telling your children that you failed to stand up when you were called to stand up.
And those of you who have come here today, it's not because of us, it is because of you; this was your yearning, this was what you wanted. You had to overcome many obstacles, but you are here today.
I want to just raise one issue that will put the government to work, and more specifically, to put our foreign policy to work.
I want to focus on the area of our surging crime wave in Trinidad and Tobago; much has been said about how we are going to tackle that internally. 70% of all murders and 90% of violent robberies are committed with small arms.
This is an international issue and it is right to tackle the problem at the international level as well, in this regard we shall make foreign policy work for us by taking the lead in the promotion of a proper international convention on small arms, that will introduce strict controls and legally binding agreements that sanction illegal importation, exportation and trade and the use of small arms. If we want to deal with crime, we must deal with it at the source of problem, not at the symptoms as collateral damage.
I have never seen a nation accept so much crap from a Minister of National Security and a Prime Minister and so much money spent for so long a time and they can still have any credibility on it. I have said when we start to deal with the crime we will deal with it at the source. We'll go to get the International Convention to stop the flow of small arms. We will get involved in the economics of the industry and prevent that industry from being fuelled, and we certainly will not allow any government expenditure to be used to fuel the criminal industry in Trinidad and Tobago.
And that is if you are serious, and that is if you are a patriot, but what have we had, you know. I keep saying on the platform, forgive me, if I blame Mr. Manning. Forgive the people if they complain about him. Forgive the society who wants to quarrel with him, because we don't have to wait longer, we must simply fire him on May 24th and get on with the job.
When a government works for the people, you grow, when you grow, your family grows, when your family grows, the community grows, and when our community grows, our country shall grow and that is what we pledge to do.
So we are here today, strangely enough out of the hopelessness of the recent past, we are here today stronger than we have ever been as citizens and people of Trinidad and Tobago.
We are here today on the brink of realizing a new hope for our young people, and I must say a special word of appreciation to all the young people who walked me through this crowd, and all the young faces that are here today and all the young faces throughout Trinidad and Tobago because you know what statement is being made in this country. Your future is at stake and you must now take a stand. I make a special appeal to the young people of our nation to stand up for your future, to stand up for your society, to stand up for your safety, to stand up for your opportunities, and make a stand now or stop complaining thereafter.
A special appeal to the young generation and I feel it is coming, because as I go through this country, I find the crowds are getting younger and younger and the people are becoming more energized and more energized and the society is expecting something great to happen and we shall guide it so that it will happen, it must happen, and we want to know are you ready my friends? Let us regain the hope we need. Let us bring into our hearts the love we have for each other, and let us celebrate on May 24th the expression of the popular will of this nation as it stands up together and take a due course for building a new society and putting this country back on track.
Are you ready my friends for that? I am ready, my colleagues are ready, the People's Partnership is ready, let us be cool for the next week, let us not be provoked in the nest week, the forces of change are going to work a great effort, and they are many who are against change in this country, so I want to leave you by saying you see this thing that is happening on incidents of violence and intimidation, be cool my friends, do your job, do what you have to do, exercise your right in the right way, do not be provoked, do not allow yourselves to fall in the trap that they would like you to fall into. Walk out here today in Tunapuna resolving to bring one hundred people, each one of you, to cast your ballot and change the course of history in Trinidad and Tobago. I salute you in what I know you shall do.
Thank you and thank you so much.
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