Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Cer­tain Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) min­is­ters who served with for­mer PNM MP/min­is­ter Kennedy Swarats­ingh in the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion, have shrugged off his ap­pear­ance on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ plat­form, his crit­i­cisms of T&T’s state un­der the cur­rent PNM Gov­ern­ment, and his en­dorse­ment of UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar for prime min­is­ter.

Ex-PNM St Joseph MP Swarats­ingh was a “sur­prise” speak­er at UNC’s eco­nom­ic con­sul­ta­tion in St Joseph on Thurs­day.

Swarats­ingh was the PNM’s St Joseph MP and Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion Min­is­ter dur­ing the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion’s 2007-2010 term. In the 2010 elec­tion, Swarats­ingh lost to Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship/UNC’s Her­bert Vol­ney.

Yes­ter­day, For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Amery Browne, al­so from the Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion, said, “I re­spect (Swarats­ingh’s) de­ci­sion, though I dis­agree com­plete­ly and fun­da­men­tal­ly. Shifts in po­lit­i­cal al­le­giance are noth­ing new in our lo­cal pol­i­tics, and it of­ten comes down to the in­di­vid­ual, their prin­ci­ples, their cir­cum­stances, and their de­gree of tol­er­ance for the lev­el of dis­course and brand of pol­i­tics prac­tised by those around them.”

Al­so con­tact­ed on Swarats­ingh’s move, out­go­ing St Joseph MP Ter­rence Deyals­ingh said, “I wish him noth­ing but the best in his new po­lit­i­cal en­deav­our.”

At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Camille Robin­son-Reg­is said of Swarats­ingh, “I wish him well.”

Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, who served along­side Swarats­ingh in the past PNM gov­ern­ment—and was men­tioned by Swarats­ingh—didn’t re­ply to emailed query on Swarats­ingh’s ap­pear­ance with the UNC. Nor did for­mer PM Dr Kei­th Row­ley—who was al­so in that gov­ern­ment—nor Min­is­ters Pen­ne­lope Beck­les and Fitzger­ald Hinds.

Swarats­ingh told Thurs­day’s au­di­ence, “I’m not here as a for­mer PNM MP or as a UNC mem­ber but as a con­cerned T&T cit­i­zen ... not just to give (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) my en­dorse­ment but al­so give her my ideas.

Swarats­ingh said the sit­u­a­tion wasn’t about bac­cha­nal but about facts and he felt in what­ev­er time he had left, he want­ed to make T&T bet­ter for his chil­dren.

“For the last 15 years, I’m sure none of you would have re­mem­bered me be­cause I haven’t ven­tured, come for­ward, spo­ken or got­ten in­volved and I have no axe to grind with any­body. My chil­dren are grown and study­ing in Cana­da, I have a lit­tle time on my hands so when I was asked to come, I put some thought in­to it,” he said.

“I said I’ve kept qui­et and stayed out of the peo­ple’s busi­ness, (but) we who know bet­ter have an oblig­a­tion to do bet­ter ... I’m sure prob­a­bly by (Fri­day), every­body go be call­ing me say­ing ‘Well Swarats­ingh, he gone be­cause he...’ But I ain’t here to eat a food or be­cause of any­thing promised. I was asked to come and give my thoughts and I’m here to do so.”

He added, “I’m here be­cause in my beau­ti­ful com­mu­ni­ty of St Joseph, there comes a time when we have to say enough is enough move aside and give some se­ri­ous peo­ple the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do what they have to do.”

Swarats­ingh said when he left pol­i­tics in 2010, he ob­tained a job in Bar­ba­dos as he couldn’t get a job lo­cal­ly. He de­tailed his work there, in­clud­ing with the CAF bank.

Say­ing cap­i­tal is need­ed for in­ject­ing in­to de­vel­op­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor, he added, “One of the dif­fi­cul­ties we’ve had in T&T is that we’ve lost our pre-em­i­nent place as the fi­nan­cial pow­er­house of the Caribbean ... the rank and file and the very mar­gin­alised peo­ple are suf­fer­ing even more and be­ing pushed fur­ther down that scale ... and one of the dif­fi­cul­ties is al­so that even if we were to in­vest in some of these projects now, it will still take a while for them to come to fruition.”

“So, in the im­me­di­ate term, we have to give peo­ple hope, con­fi­dence and be em­pa­thet­ic and the on­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of that we can find in the po­lit­i­cal sce­nario to­day is the ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar,” he added.

Swarats­ingh, who cit­ed the UNC/PP Gov­ern­ment’s in­vest­ment of US$325 mil­lion in CAF, not­ed that it had en­ti­tled T&T to US$1.2 bil­lion in sup­port funds for de­vel­op­ment.

“Un­for­tu­nate­ly, UNC came out of of­fice in 2015 and be­fore they could ac­cess that mon­ey, Colm Im­bert be­came fi­nance min­is­ter ...,” he said.

Swarats­ingh de­tailed how he at­tempt­ed to help through his CAF work—a US$100 mil­lion re­volv­ing HDC fund, beau­ti­fi­ca­tion for the Beetham, a US$30 mil­lion re­volv­ing fa­cil­i­ty for FCB—“But noth­ing hap­pened.”

Say­ing CAF con­tin­ues to be un­der­utilised, he said as the UNC moves for­ward, he rec­om­mend­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar, when she be­comes PM, should get a re­volv­ing fa­cil­i­ty.

“As we move for­ward, I rec­om­mend to the Ho­n­ourable Op­po­si­tion Leader, when she be­comes prime min­is­ter, is to get a re­volv­ing fa­cil­i­ty; we should do sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties with hous­ing—Tatil mustn’t be the on­ly place where ‘we treat peo­ple like peo­ple’.”

He said there is so much avail­able to T&T but the way in which sys­tems are de­signed, it’s weighed down by bu­reau­cra­cy and banks should be giv­en more lee­way for peo­ple to bring mon­ey back to T&T.

He said he’d not­ed meet­ings be­ing held with banks.

“We should be do­ing that reg­u­lar­ly, so who­ev­er oc­cu­pies on be­half of Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar, must be some­one who can bring con­fi­dence...,” he said.

Crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment’s re­liance on the Drag­on gas deal with Venezuela, he said there are many as­sets like Petrotrin that are un­der­utilised.

“You have re­al so­lu­tions for peo­ple who want to work, be in­no­v­a­tive and imag­i­na­tive and if Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar can do that, then vot­ing for her and the UNC is like Or­chard juice, ‘a per­fect­ly nat­ur­al choice’.”