Shas­tri Boodan

Trinidad and To­ba­go is fac­ing "mor­tal dan­ger," warned Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP) leader Prakash Ra­mad­har, as he pre­dict­ed a bleak fu­ture if the rul­ing Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) re­mains in pow­er for an­oth­er term.

Speak­ing at a COP po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Sat­ur­day at the par­ty’s Curepe head­quar­ters, Ra­mad­har de­scribed the up­com­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion as one of the most crit­i­cal in the na­tion’s his­to­ry.

“This coun­try is in such grave dan­ger that many do not grasp the enor­mi­ty of what lies ahead. If we think things are bad now, we fail to un­der­stand the de­struc­tive forces that could be un­leashed, if they haven’t al­ready be­gun,” he said.

He lament­ed that T&T, once a leader in the re­gion, has now be­come “a laugh­ing stock on al­most every lev­el.” He blamed the PNM Gov­ern­ment for the coun­try’s spi­ral­ing crime rate, par­tic­u­lar­ly in ar­eas tra­di­tion­al­ly loy­al to the par­ty.

“In the heart­land of the PNM that has gov­erned this coun­try for all the years, this is mad­ness. They can­not even con­trol a com­mu­ni­ty that they have gov­erned all of the time from in­de­pen­dence on­wards. They al­most afraid to go in. The state is now weak and meek. T&T is more than these things, we must re­store law and or­der with de­cen­cy and fair­ness.”

Ra­mad­har al­so crit­i­cized the PNM’s han­dling of the econ­o­my, point­ing to the clo­sure of the Petrotrin re­fin­ery and the sub­se­quent at­tempt to sell it years lat­er af­ter it had de­te­ri­o­rat­ed.

“What stopped the PNM from look­ing for a buy­er back then?” he ques­tioned.

He al­so warned of a wors­en­ing for­eign ex­change cri­sis, pre­dict­ing that once the Her­itage and Sta­bi­liza­tion Fund is de­plet­ed, the coun­try may strug­gle to af­ford ba­sic food im­ports.

He said If that hap­pens, T&T could see suf­fer­ing like what was wit­nessed in Venezuela. And if things spi­ral fur­ther out of con­trol, T&T may end up like Haiti, where the Gov­ern­ment has com­plete­ly lost its grip.

Ra­mad­har al­so dis­missed out­dat­ed po­lit­i­cal nar­ra­tives, say­ing, “The old pro­pa­gan­da about politi­cians ‘thief­ing’ won’t be enough to sway vot­ers this time.”

He ad­mit­ted, the COP, now 19 years old and the third-largest par­ty in T&T, has been large­ly dor­mant in re­cent years. How­ev­er, he in­sist­ed that the par­ty was nev­er dead, just side­lined by po­lit­i­cal forces that dis­missed its vi­sion of "new pol­i­tics," a term coined by for­mer leader Win­ston Dook­er­an.

“I want to put to rest to­day that we were wrong to call it new pol­i­tics, what we ex­er­cised in the po­lit­i­cal sphere is the time­less val­ues that have al­lowed so­ci­ety for eons to have suc­ceed­ed. You can­not have lead­er­ship with­out in­tegri­ty, you can­not have lead­er­ship with­out hon­esty, lead­er­ship with­out fair­ness, lead­er­ship with­out love.”

With his ral­ly­ing call, Ra­mad­har urged sup­port­ers to re­vive the COP and re­claim its place in na­tion­al pol­i­tics. Ra­mad­har did not take ques­tions from the me­dia fol­low­ing the meet­ing. How­ev­er, he said all ques­tions would be an­swered lat­er this week when the COP holds a news con­fer­ence.

The meet­ing start­ed around 3.30 pm by this time sup­port­ers start­ed to fill the venue. A num­ber of sup­port­ers lined up out­side with plac­ards high­light­ing the lev­el of crime in T&T. The meet­ing at­tract­ed per­sons of var­i­ous ages to the venue.