By Chantalé Fletcher
AFTER 60 years of Independence, Trinidad and Tobago should be a powerhouse in the world like Norway and Singapore.
However, it is not, says political leader of the Progressive Empowerment Party (PEP) Phillip Edward Alexander in his Independence Day message on Wednesday.
He said, “Instead, we take comfort in the misfortunes of failed states to find solace for the misery that is our existence.”
“We cannot pretend that all is well 60 years on when we are still a narco pipeline, Singapore who never had oil has no drug problem,” Alexander said.
He said young men were frustrated and armed to the teeth even as our law enforcement is at its most demoralised.
Alexander said, “We have no economic soul. No direction. No plan. Point Lisas that was supposed to take the bounty of gas and oil to the next level is now a ghost town and a wasteland. Norway has set aside hundreds of thousands as pensions for its citizens from the profits from its oil investments, and is moving to be the first country where citizens live energy free.”
He added the former largest refinery in the world now await the scrap iron man, while T&T’s neighbours searched the world for refiners.
Alexander said, “Guyana is leaking forward into the new world, Suriname is looking up, even Jamaica has a gleam in her eye. The joke of our pitch lake and state of our roads prompts no one into action, neither does the one about standing in water while our pipes are dry.”
He said, “Government has become the enemy of the people, taxing them mercilessly and giving nothing in return.
“Cabinet ministers use blue lights to evade the traffic the cabinet is responsible for fixing. Ministers flee the jurisdiction for health care while foisting what has to be the worst health care in the world on the citizens.
“Yesterday a young man paralyzed from the neck down had to wait ten hours for an ambulance in an emergency. If we are to judge ourselves by how we treat the most vulnerable then our treatment of him is who we truly are.”
Alexander said, “Education is in a crisis and collapsing, creating more known grist for the crime machine that has replaced our economy. Banks are looting their customers’ accounts, foreign exchange is given to a select few to force the rest into fattening their profit line.”
He said, “We can fix it if we want to and if I had to search for something for all of us to be happy about today, it is that there is still hope. Like everywhere in the world though that are examples of failure or success, it will come down to what we do next.”
