THE EDITOR:
FROM as early as the 2000 election, “intellectual”
TnT, with enthusiastic support and encouragement from the twice
rejected and discredited PM Patrick Manning People’s National
Movement (PNM), initiated the now popular national “hobby”
of Basdeo Panday/United National Congress (UNC) bashing.
While our history has never been graced by a ruling dispensation
whose stewardship in office has been above legitimate critique,
none, in or out of power, has suffered the level of accusation,
vilification and abuse, bordering upon the Panday UNC.
By the same token, none has achieved so much, of benefit to so many,
from so little. Why, therefore, that abuse?
Did the UNC, via poor fiscal management and/or corruption, plunge
us, as did the PNM, onto the tender mercies of the IMF a feat Manning
is determined to repeat?
Has there ever been any greater crime against society?
Did any member of that PNM administration suffer the level of opprobrium
and abuse visited upon Basdeo Panday?
If not, why not?
Jerome Audain, respected contributor to letter pages in the print
media, must, for his latest submission in the Guardian of August
7, 2006, be congratulated on two counts.
First, for his integrity and honesty in publicly acknowledging the
performance between ’95 and ’01, of the now demonised
Panday UNC and second for succeeding where I and other unbiased
observers have consistently failed since December 24, 2001 to circumvent
implacable and I believe, bias motivated, editorial rejection of
attempts to tell it as it really was.
Audain’s letter should thus be compulsory reading for all
UNC bashers.
UNC contributions to this nation’s built infrastructure, no
less than a climate conducive to entrepreneurship, civic pride,
control of the crime which blossomed under their predecessors, and
has since proliferated, cannot, among other examples of progressive
and equitable legislation, but stand as indictments upon the performance
or otherwise, of both predecessors and successors in office.
This, the more so when it is recalled that oil, our principle engine
of development, stood throughout their tenure in office at US$9
per barrell!
Further, the fact that upon their removal, the Treasury surrendered
was significantly healthier than that inherited in 1995, must, to
the reasonable and intellectually unchallenged, stand in silent
refutation of the more scurrilous allegations of which they have
been convicted, in the court of public opinion!
Such indisputable fact is alas, both so easily and expediently forgotten.
That the UNC, when most needed now stands in hopeless disarray,
rather than a source of further opprobrium, is the predictable and
calculated result of the most effective and expensive “black
wash” upon which the $18b ’02 budget and that entire
year was squandered. 1,400 plus murders, runaway inflation, crumbling
infrastructure, massive social dislocation and disaffection, collapse
and failure in every aspect of state provided services poses, obvious
questions that can no longer be evaded: Even had the Panday UNC
been guilty of each and every allegation, given Audain’s incomplete
list of verifiable UNC achievements in office, who save the ruling
dispensation and their now dwindling clique of cronies ad sycophants,
have really benefited from either “morality, spirituality
and the rule of law” or the latest oil windfall?
Further and most significant, where today in the conduct of this
nation’s affairs is to be found those noble sentiments cited
in justification for democratic abuse, so callously prostituted
since December 24, 2001.
What, therefore, is the real sin of Panday and the UNC?
Was it their unmatched level of performance in the national interest,
or was it the very Indianness of those performers?
Response, Selwyn Cudjoe?
Whatever the answer, no unbiased comparison twixt the then (’95
to ’01) and now can fall to summon the phrase, “from
frying pan to fire”.
The tragedy is, unless we place political integrity and equity above
ethnic bigotry before 2007, we and our offspring will suffer for
generations to come the heat of the fire into which we have plunged
this nation.
The choice is ours and time is not on our side as disaster looms
closer. |
