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Address by Mr Winston Dookeran - Manifesto Launch | | Election 2010 Campaign Speech | | Author: | | Date: 2010-05-21 17:05:18 |
| Mrs. Kamla Persad-Bissessar, the person who will start writing the new book in Trinidad and Tobago very shortly, my friends and colleagues, I almost felt that I was in the first cabinet meeting in the new Government of Trinidad and Tobago and I am asked to speak to you on issues of economy and finance.
In other words, how shall we pay for the promise of a better tomorrow. The truth is the real resources that we have to muster is not the financial resources, as important as it will be, but it is a new energy that must be based on harnessing the values of a new leadership and a society that builds a sense confidence and trust that a new leadership shall adhere to those values.
To me, that is how we will eventually pay for the promise of a better tomorrow, and it is in that context I believe that we are at a historical moment in our country when the underlying and fundamental crisis we are facing, is a crisis of values, in which our society has gone wrong and we must put it right. To do so, we must of course address the hard issues of the economy and finance and you have seen in the Manifesto, you will see in the Manifesto shortly when you read it, a great trust towards sustainable development and the use of the word 'sustainable' is very deliberate.
For we are looking not only about today's generation, but we shall be looking at tomorrow's generation. We shall be the spokesperson of our citizens, not yet born and we shall leave them an inheritance better than the one we have in fact inherited ourselves.
And the three fundamental pillars of which we shall build that future is based on what I will call competitiveness, inclusiveness and expansionism.
We would first have to find a way to expand our economy and to do that we would have to exploit all the opportunities in the global world ahead of us. I have told my friend, Ashworth Jack that size and distance is no longer a constraint to development and Tobago has a great future as they penetrate the global world.
We too would have to search for new opportunities with a revised foreign policy objective, focusing in a new world in which there is now a different political order and consequently, a different economic order.
We cannot stand still and be comforted by the world of yesterday because that world has fundamentally changed and will continue to change.
Since building an expansionist policy and economic front, we will have to explore why we deepen our Caribbean integration movement.
We will have to explore new avenues of the Latin America hemisphere so that we can create opportunities for our people and our productive sector to get involved in the global opportunities, the new outsourcing industries of the world and the new dimensions of financial products that are now part of the terrain of modern economics.
To do so, we must ensure that we have a very competitive economy, one that can, in fact, compete in that framework and when I listen to my friend Mr. Errol Mc Leod I feel sure that we have the fundamentals for the creation of that competitive economy and we shall start first and foremost at the creation of a social compact between all of the partners in the society, be it labour, be it civil society, be it Government or be it business.
What the country will have to hold is not an expenditure pattern that we cannot afford, but will have to share in the ownership of the burdens of new growth pains which we will have to undertake in the next few years.
Social compact will be the way we will start that new dialogue. But we won't have enough time to talk forever because society will have great expectations, and the discontent in society will be so high that we will almost have to deliver the day after we are installed into office.
But in such a delivery we must accept the third principle of our economic strategy which is inclusiveness... Inclusiveness is the new word that is used not only in economic terms, but in terms of politics, including all who have been traditionally left out - all those who remain victims of a vicious economic systems, all those who have been at the other end of a failed economic policy.
Where ever they fit they must now be part of the new beneficiaries of a new Trinidad and Tobago.
I could simply add that even in the political sphere when we talk about coalition and when we are criticized for embarking on an experiment that is likely to fail, what really is a failure is the misunderstanding on the part of those who claim that politics, the new politics of inclusiveness in the Coalition Government is the best expression of a new Government.
Those who attack us for moving into the new politics are comfortable remaining in the politics of exclusiveness rather than the politics of inclusiveness in which we are engaged.
It is in the context of those three fundamental principles that we will in fact embark on a number of individual strategies that will become a new departure point from the politics and economics of yesterday.
In the first instance, our priorities of expenditure will shift towards satisfying the basic needs of the people. Whether such basic needs reflect itself in water needs, health needs, education needs, irrigation needs, the needs of the market vendors, the needs of the taxi drivers, the needs of the rural poor, the needs of the poor and disposed, the young people.
So our national expenditure program not only that within the Government, but that within the country will shift as the primary responsibility of the state to satisfy the basic needs of the people.
Thereafter we shall build what we have to build to sustain the economy, but the economy cannot be sustained if the basic needs of the people are not satisfied.
In this regard I must thank PM Manning for he has paved the roads in Tunapuna, and I will not have to do that anymore. We have looked carefully at all the ongoing projects that there are and each one is subject to the necessary forensic audits which must be done quickly and that is why we have a judge on the side.
We cannot afford prolonged discussion on that but we must ensure that justice be done so that society can build trust... But we are committed to complete all the infrastructural projects currently in train in Tobago, but we will have to draw all the resources in order to chart that new course and not least of which being the resource of the people themselves and therefore we will have to find a new approach to involving the people in their development.
Development cannot be imported. It is the philosophy in which we develop the new strategy. We will add to that that we do not have and bring the necessary foreign investment that is required. We will expand the trade opportunities but at the heart of it, development shall be the responsibility of the people of Trinidad and Tobago and they alone shall hold the reins of power in the development of Trinidad and Tobago.
And to assist us we have committed ourselves in the establishment of an economic development board staffed by individuals drawn from all aspects of life, be it academia, professional, civil society, labour, industry and we shall draw on their tremendous goodwill that exist today in all the metropolitan parts of the world where many of our residents are still residing and we will draw on their expertise as well in the economic development board so that we can leave no-one outside the realm, unpopulated and designing the economic policy and financial outcome of such policies.
So my friends the job ahead is not going to be as easy as we would like it to be, but the job ahead is not beyond our ability to handle.
If and when we do leave office some years to come, we will not leave an inheritance similar to the one we shall inherit on May 24th. Already we have rolled up our sleeves.
Already the society has been energized.
Already the society is waiting with expectations for the start of a new beginning and I emphasize it is only but a start, and a start of a new beginning is what this country requires in the twenty first century.
Let me just end by saying that what we are facing in Trinidad and Tobago is not an isolated event. Today all over the world we are finding new models of political governance are emerging.
As you are all aware in the United Kingdom they have recently installed the coalition government.
The term "New Politics" started in Trinidad and Tobago in earnest and critical platform a few years ago, then I knew it was an international development that was taking place.
Now we have come home to see the realization of that and as we roll up our sleeves we know we have to grow, for when we grow our families grow and when our families grow, our community grows and community grows, our nation shall grow.
We are therefore in the new space in the politics of our times. The politics of a country where the space is now open, where the new start in the development of the country must be initiated.
Where there is now development, growth and equity, where the Government will work for the people rather than have the people work to keep a Government in office.
Therefore today is a special day in the calendar of our times as we offer to this nation a new hope. As we offer to this nation a new command as we get down to work.
I hope this nation will stand up and ask itself whether they will continue to be imprisoned by those who have stopped leading since 1970, or they will embrace the new leaders of the 21st Century to take the next step in the development of Trinidad and Tobago.
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