Yes, Prime Minister...

In the classic fable 'The Emperor's New Clothes' the Emperor is duped by the clever knowing that the 'yes men and women' around him would dare not disagree with him even if they were told that he was not naked in public but was in fact wearing clothes that they just couldn't see. So they ended up lying to agree with him in his confusion and ended up making a royal fool of him. This same plot-line was taken to the extreme and milked of all its comic value in the British hit comedy series 'Yes Minister,' and made the point every week that one ought to be careful whose advice and more importantly, whose interpretation of circumstances one subscribed to.

Take our illustrious Prime Minister, whose brand management and now electoral campaign is being run by an illusion artist capable of convincing her that the growing negative public perception of her that is happening on his watch is nothing for which she should be concerned. So the hit that she took and continues to take while they gave out bribes to media workers in her name and at her event remains, and while it is being touted as a 'help for the needful in times of need,' no explanation was given as to why this 'help' was not given out in the full glare of everyone else or to everyone else invited. But that is nothing. This same charlatan is presiding over her name slowly being made synonymous with bad luck and blight, so that everything that she blesses or attends, if the team she supports loses, it becomes comic fodder after on social media and in traditional 'ole talk' that 'the Prime Minister blight the team.' This was seen in the Brazilian World Cup epic defeat and just recently the Trinbagonian Women's Team's attempt to qualify for the World Cup. But it gets worse still.

In the recently concluded Cabinet retreat held in Tobago to prepare for the upcoming General Elections, the overwhelming majority of Cabinet Ministers polled readily agree that the individual in question appears clueless to the needs of the party and its floundering popularity despite the fact that it and they delivering on an extremely high level. They point to the telegraphed campaign to create a cult of sorts around the Prime Minister where she is adored for the government's successes, and the associated marginalizing of every other Minister that is surely bound to backfire by an opposition who now only have one target to hit. On the upside to this the Ministers with the power to ignore this communications mismanagement who are in fact managing their own brands and preparing to step into the light should the need arise, and one only has to point to the remarkable transformation of the Housing Minister from dour and arrogant to tempered and measured and a joy to listen to even when engaging his and the government's enemies, who now keeps his rapier wit sheathed while focusing his barbs in cleverly designed come backs that make even his detractors laugh, showing an understanding of the national culture and a willingness to bend the show to suit the audience.

The public for their part is also telling the government to hold the public relations and deal with them from a position of fact, to give us the bitter medicine stripped down of all the glitz and glamour and let them decide. Take the fourteen month old Minister of National Security for example, who has demonstrated a willingness to communicate with the public at every step regardless of the perceived popularity of his policy or lack thereof at the time, which has resulted in a public trusting him in a Ministry that, prior to his elevation, was considered a career killer for every previous holder of that office including two Prime Ministers who were all ridiculed for their efforts. This from a Minister who has dismantled the culture of rewarding gang members with state contracts, contrary to the previously widely held belief that the government through the MONS should be accommodating to gang leaders in exchange for peace. Instead he has extracted peace through the enforcement of the law and the threat of further enforcement and the public is lapping it up. Now he does not even have to defend himself or his policies, and Friday's broadcast that a New York based fringe group was taking serious issue with his immigration repatriation policy saw social media rise vociferously to his defense. To the uninitiated that is called winning the battle of hearts and minds.

So what am i saying?

That it is a cheap stunt to attempt to package everything good in the land as the Prime Minister's doing, and everything bad as the work of sinister opposition forces. The public is not that foolish and the push back when it comes will sting. Further, this policy of isolating and shaming those perceived to be opposed to the government in any way is backfiring badly, and our hard working multi talented and willing Attorney General seems to be the first to pay the ultimate price. His ratings are so low outside of the People's Partnership Government and the United National Congress there is a new joke making the rounds, that if Anand were to cure cancer the people would choose cancer over his cure.

Now there are many who would not dare tell the AG that simply because the AG appears unable to process negativity or bad news, but to succeed in public life one must not only develop a thick skin where detractors are concerned, one must almost become Christ-like in one's willingness to forgive. This is something that the high functioning public figures around the world understand, that the people demand their right to an opinion of you as an expression of their own power, and the real job is to manage that impression. It is where Fuad Khan went so wrong over the easily solved ambulance issue, and instead of taking the matter being raised as a personal attack he had a wonderful opportunity to come down on the side of the people, express outrage over the tragic and calamitous state of affairs and pledge to work unceasingly to rectify them regardless of the obstacles that needed to be overcome. His surly and withdrawn response has drawn the ire of the public and now they are monitoring his every step to expose him again, something inevitable in the difficult to run health sector and I daresay, the new career killing Ministry.

My advice to Fuad? Come straight with the public, out yourself and the entire health sector, bombard the people with the failings and their failures, implement new policies in full view of the public, and most importantly, engage your detractors. There is no amount of money available to fool people with PR stunts equivalent to a converted detractor. When those traditionally opposed to you start singing your praises it is then that you would have won the public's trust.

Similarly with the Attorney General, whose personality seems to reflexively lash out at people he considers opposed to him. This is not working for him and neither is the campaign to 'soften' his image now being waged on social media. His is a unique situation as he is supposed to embody his office and should do so with the dignity for which it calls. The only approach of merit for him is to cease the public politicking altogether, to only approach national issues from the position of the Attorney General of the Republic of Trinidad & Tobago, and to do so with the greatest respect for the office and all that portends.

But why am I giving all of this free advice?

To let Rodney Charles and any cabalists in the government know that I am unfazed by their behind the scenes chicanery to punish me for speaking the truth. The threat of the loss of contracts or the ability to bid for contracts will never work to control me, and, if anything will further embolden me to  expose the heavy handed misuse of state funds to control public opinion.

I also understand that these same individuals have been working behind the scene to prevent me being allowed to contest the Diego Martin West seat as a member of the People's Partnership, but I wonder what they believe would be the outcome of that situation with someone so politically minded and active as myself, who had to sacrifice much of his own support base to support this government? I wonder if Rodney Charles is ready for the push back of myself and others like me come election time, who have zero interest in seeing a PNM government ever come to office but would inadvertently end up working in their favor as we work to punish the political charlatans in our midst?

As Kahlil Gibran said in his world famous work 'The Prophet' – 'You can muffle the drum, and you can loosen the strings of the lyre, but who shall command the skylark not to sing?'

Madame Prime Minister the last polls told you that your communications is not working. That despite you presiding over the best performing government that we have ever had, the people are anxious to rid themselves of your government. This will not get better and accelerating while being stuck only deepens the hole. As of this writing I am prepared to resign any position and surrender any contract in exchange for principle and integrity and to let you know that you are being made a fool. You are a high functioning capable Prime Minister, quite possibly the best that we have ever had. Do not allow the simple minded to dress you up and trot you out like a Barbie Doll. Listen to the ground, they will tell you everything you need to know and to do to retain office in 2015. You might be surprised the benefit to your popularity a tactical firing or two could accomplish right now.

Bringing this Rowley nonsense to an end...

Before he could finish smirking over the allegations he made in the Parliament last Friday that 'police all over' were looking for a former government Minister and United National Congress Member of Parliament, Political Leader of the People's National Movement Dr. Keith Rowley had to switch off his phone to stop taking calls as the rumor mill was abuzz with the latest news, that a young attorney short listed as one of his bright new stars and earmarked to be a future PNM Member of Parliament was himself arrested a short time after.



Now not wanting to get into the details of either matter, it is clear that the time tested sayings stand the test of time simply because they're have so much truth in them, and in this case it is obvious that who the Gods wish to destroy they do indeed first make mad.



But this is to be expected, and like the former People's Partnership Minister who himself seems bent on self destructing spectacularly, this is a man who has built an entire career on nothing but fluff and bravado and has pushed it so far even he must be shocked that he is still getting away with it. I mean seriously, think back over his twenty five year career and tell me one thing of national value this individual has contributed. Can't, can you? It's unbelievable that he has slipped by this far on so little for so long. And at the constituency level it is worse. Much worse. He has never once been on the ground. The only time we've ever heard him mention walking about was in reference to nineteen eighty six when he mentioned that he walked in Westmoorings and Glencoe, but for the rest of the constituency, not a word, not a trace. It's almost as if he's a ghost. Phoning it in from the start, he is that guy on every job site who figures out the boss' movements and times him. Who appears busy only when he absolutely has to be. Who is the most vocal on a wide assortment of issues, but none of them can he ever really claim as his own.



My issue with this individual is his blatant disingenuousness. His two faced, hypocritical forked tongue double standard. This individual who stood up in the Parliament and accused his political leader of knowing that the Cabinet he led was corrupt to the core and was engaged in bid rigging, because he said he told him so in two thousand and three. But he told us all this after his falling out with his same leader in two thousand and nine, but what he has never said to this day is what he did for the six years in between. By his own admission the systematic rape of the treasury that was taking place every year was ten times worse than what took place at Piarco, and as by then we all knew the estimated haul at Piarco was upwards of a billion dollars, is he saying that he knew for a fact that the PNM government that he was a part of was stealing over ten billion dollars a year, and he did nothing for six years? This man, who has called the country to order on a whiff and a suspicion, who has invaded the sanctity of the Chairman of the Integrity Commission's home when he thought the matter was of an urgent nature based on flimsy suspicions made no report to the same Integrity Commission for six years despite admitting that he knew for a fact that the government of which he was a part was stealing tens of billions of dollars of public funds? Not a call to the media? To the police? To the Fraud Squad? As a senior Cabinet Minister he could have called in Transparency International if he wanted, but from his own mouth again we know he did absolutely nothing, so tell me, on what is anyone to base any consideration of this individual for the office and positions he currently holds, much less support him for higher office?



And if all of what I said before were not already an indelible justification and a stain on a bleak and dismal failure of a career, what has he done to advance the cause of his party or the interests of the country or its people for the over four and a half years he has been leader of the Opposition? What plans and policies advanced? What options suggested? What ideas mentioned in passing?

On what then does this Prime Ministerial hopeful base his and by extension our fortunes should he succeed with his ambitions? On a wish? A prayer? On the public's possible disenchantment with the government so that he could benefit from another 'slip een?’ I put to the entire national community that it is way past time that this entire Keith Christopher Rowley charade be brought to an end. That this chapter in our political misfortunes need to be closed and the individual retired to a place where he can do no more harm. In an ideal world that would be the responsibility of the very Opposition that is currently languishing like a rudderless boat in stormy water under his leadership, but out of concern and love of country we may all need to get involved and put this particular political misadventure out of its misery. For all of our sakes. Just in case.



When the People Rise... (Real Unity)

Don't you just love it when those who set out to fool are themselves fooled and made fools of? This week we had two perfect such examples of the flipping of the script that my romantic heart was filled with so much hope it made me proud to be a Trini once more.

The first was the clearly orchestrated attempt at managing our low information voter through the clever use of racism and threats of violence to destabilize the nation, but which did not so much as backfire as it fizzled, leaving the Public Relations Officers of both of the political parties implicated in the matter taking to the airwaves to finger point and jibber jabber, while the rest of the population yawned, looked away and ignored them both. I swear, if I could have shaken one point three million hands that day I gladly would have, just for the message it sent to the two empty suits of the UNC's Rodney Charles and the PNM's Faris al Rawi. Now it's back to the drawing boards for these two and the dinosaurs behind them who still think that punctured tires and a threatening flyer placed on vehicles was going to incense the public enough to affect them on a passionate political level.

Shows just how much they are misreading the public, doesn't it? The majority of Trinbagonians aren't Africans and Indians no more, they seem to have seen through the ruse. The polls taken by the pollsters continue to tell the politicians and the public two different things, and if I were to advise those pulling the campaign strings it would be to shut up and listen, the people are guiding you. You are not getting statistical dead heats in the polls, you're getting apathy. The people are fed up. This is not twenty years ago, this is the time of instant information where the news cycle lags behind the public information curve. Now the people form opinions before the opinion shapers get a chance to tell them what to think, catching pundits everywhere off guard every single time and I have to say I love it.

Every creed and race appears on the way to finding an equal place, and step one along that road seems to be a uniting in disgust over the fables of the story tellers. Wonderful time to be alive I tell you.

The second thing that happened was the evaporation of Ancil Roget's political if not union leader career and everything else that came wrapped up in that embarrassing collapse of yet another PNM supported, ILP inspired, OWTU led march to nowhere over nothing for no good reason. Not that I am taking a political side to the union's position but am in fact questioning why the union would have one in the first place. But i'm getting ahead of myself. I wonder what David 'opinion on everything ' Abdullah thinks of this latest calamity to befall him and his comrades in arms?  Is he savvy enough to read the tea leaves to see that the entire population is just fed up of the nonsense now? That the lack of real leadership offered by Keith Rowley is a turn off? That the Jesus today, Judas tomorrow games Jack Warner plays are all played out? That no one cares if Ancil Roget is happy or sad because he has never had credibility or integrity with the public to begin with?

No, the politics of the future is certainly not going to be rooted anywhere near the politics of the past and those hoping for a career better understand the times we live in and get with the programme. The people don't care what you look like or the texture of your hair, they know we deserve better and whosoever is dealing those cards can be dealer for the rest of the game for all they care. They understand now that politicians are servants. That you are not going to get a raise in pay until we get an increase in the quality of our lives. That your bitching and moaning in the Parliament will not help you one iota come election time if the people are not satisfied with either your performance or your promise, and bet your bottom dollar, your words better match your track record or you will feel like Anil Roberts felt on his honeymoon night, unsure of if he was really in or out.

Now is the time for the rise of real people-centered, delivery-focused leaders with national vision and hearts for service. None of the numbers of the past are going to matter in this bright new frontier, in a world where the sitting Minister of National Security is so widely loved he could sit in any party, where any colour and it would matter nothing to a public so enamored with him that all they care about is him continuing to hold that job. And that's the lesson. Serving the people is now a measurable quantity not based on your predecessor or your challenger but on you and your promises. The people hold the reins of media and information and possess the ability to check you against yourself and what they know to be in their best interest. We are at a time when delivery is going to talk and gobar is going to walk, and to close how I opened, I am so proud of my fellow Trinis right about now, if for nothing, for finding their way home despite some of the questionable leadership we have had in the past fifty two years. It's a wonderful time to be alive.

Public Service Solutions...

An experimenter puts five monkeys in a large cage. High up at the top of the cage, well beyond the reach of the monkeys, is a bunch of bananas. Underneath the bananas is a ladder.

The monkeys immediately spot the bananas and one begins to climb the ladder. As he does, however, the experimenter sprays him with a stream of cold water. Then, he proceeds to spray each of the other monkeys.

The monkey on the ladder scrambles off. And all five sit for a time on the floor, wet, cold, and bewildered. Soon, though, the temptation of the bananas is too great, and another monkey begins to climb the ladder. Again, the experimenter sprays the ambitious monkey with cold water and all the other monkeys as well. When a third monkey tries to climb the ladder, the other monkeys, wanting to avoid the cold spray, pull him off the ladder and beat him.

Now one monkey is removed and a new monkey is introduced to the cage. Spotting the bananas, he naively begins to climb the ladder. The other monkeys pull him off and beat him.

Here’s where it gets interesting. The experimenter removes a second one of the original monkeys from the cage and replaces him with a new monkey. Again, the new monkey begins to climb the ladder and, again, the other monkeys pull him off and beat him – including the monkey who had never been sprayed.

By the end of the experiment, none of the original monkeys were left and yet, despite none of them ever experiencing the cold, wet, spray, they had all learned never to try and go for the bananas.

That experiment has been used to explain if not excuse a wide swath of inexplicable human behavior including our inability to confront and resolve negative issues by thinking 'outside of the box.' We have become a people to whom 'it has always been so' is enough to keep us in line, regardless of the temptation to do better.

I use it today to confront a nagging national issue, the public service. What is the purpose of the public service? Where is it written that we have to have a public service? If the public service frustrates everyone from government officials to private citizens, why has it not been disbanded and discontinued with all of its workers redeployed? When will we ever have a government forward thinking enough to stop complaining and deal with this issue head on? Who has final responsibility to address this matter?

We have been dragging this same rotting corpse around with us since independence, complaining about the shoddy work ethic and poor customer service from these 'unmovable' workers, so why? Why do we continue to do this if it serves us no one any real purpose? Why has no government seen it fit to take the bull by the horns and disband the public service altogether? To bring the legislation required to make it easier to privatize everything from pillar to post and change the paradigm from 'job for life' to 'in service of the public?'

What makes little or no sense is this idea that the public service as set up is the obstacle to progress. If that were really the case, why has the government not taken steps to fix it? Why not bring legislation to the Parliament that re-invents how the business of government is done? I mean, this is the government that changed the way elections are run despite widespread disagreement, a clear demonstration of what could be accomplished if there is political will, so why not this?

And what of the opposition? Are they too not bothered by these same obstacles to progress? Wouldn't they have a vested interest in supporting legislation that makes the business of governing easier?

So why not fix it once and for all?

Clearly having a public service that prevents employees who demonstrably function as obstacles to progress from being removed from office could never be the intention, so again I ask, why has this not been changed?

I am loathe to end any column on a question but until we have information as to why governments complain about the public service but do nothing to re-invent it we have no choice. Perhaps that should become an issue on the campaign trail for the next general election, with the question being put to prospective candidates - “Do you support either the redevelopment or the removal of the public service altogether?”

The Keith Rowley Conundrum...

In 2009 Dr. Keith Rowley stood up in this country's Parliament and told the nation that he had gone to then Prime Minister Patrick Manning and warned him that there was “massive bid rigging and corruption taking place at UDECOTT that was ten times worse than (what took place at) Piarco,” yet he never adequately explained what he did for the six years that followed, six years in which he accepted Cabinet appointments in a Cabinet that he knowingly believed to be led by a willing and informed co-conspirator in the sins named above, six years in which he ate Cabinet food and drank Cabinet wine, six years in which the record shows he did nothing else whatsoever to attempt to rescue this nation from the wholesale pilferage he KNEW was taking place by men and women of the very Cabinet of which he was a part, celebrated six Christmases and Easters, dressed up for six Indian Arrival and Emancipation Days, played six Carnivals, counted two thousand one hundred and ninety odd days  and watched them go by with nary a word to anyone else, not the Integrity Commission, not the Fraud Squad, not the Commissioner of Police, not Transparency International, not the media, not his neighbour, nor the man he bought his tomatoes from, no one and nothing, until he was fired.

Then he was a veritable fountain of knowledge, spouting from the hallowed hilltops of those sacred halls information that he withheld from the people of Trinidad & Tobago for his own selfish interests, conspired to deceive them so that he could continue to advance his own agendas, feather his own nest as it were, but only when the ruse of his own masquerade as an able Minister of Government was up and he was left wanting did he then attempt to throw his leader under the bus, to smear and besmirch his name for sins he accused him of knowing for six long years, yet he as a senior member of Government who also knew, also did nothing, while the systematic rape of the people's treasury was allowed to go on unimpeded.

And yet and despite this and for whatever reason they can muster as to the unmeasurable depravity that has allowed this political charlatan to rise so high despite never having accomplished anything of real value to anyone while holding public office, the people of the People's National Movement defend him as leader. A simple walk through the die hard PNM communities in the Diego Martin West constituency that he has represented for twenty five years will offer nothing but desperation, poverty, squalor, violence and the shadow of death. The people of these areas actually went backward on his watch, with illiteracy and under employment rates soaring, home ownership and entrepreneurship depleting, Richplain has become a veritable killing field at night, Covigne is a ghost town, Factory Road a shame for all who have to endure what they have had to suffer despite the party they support having had forty one years of political and economic control and two multi-billion dollar oil booms from which they could have been blessed, but from which they were marginalized and ignored.

Keith Rowley brings nothing original or of value to the table, has not piloted a Bill of note, advanced no real policy, but has instead and without shame dusted off his predecessors plans and policies and are now claiming them as his own and is making them as political promises in lieu of anything of his own making.

To paraphrase the writings of a contributor in Prague, the danger to Trinidad & Tobago is not Dr. Keith Rowley per se, but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with leadership. It will be far easier to limit and undo the follies of a Rowley administration than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to a depraved electorate who would consider such a man for their Prime Minister. The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Dr. Rowley, who is a mere symptom of what ails this nation. Blaming the prince of fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The Republic can survive a Keith Rowley, who is, after all, merely a fool. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools, such as those who might make him their Prime Minister.

Snatching Defeat from the Jaws of Victory...

This weekend at least one of the daily newspapers quoted a political poll without publishing the actual poll, and while all of us were caught up reacting to the poll, it is only when someone asked me to send them a copy of the poll did I realize that I had not yet seen the actual poll. Worse, every single person that I contacted on the poll who themselves had weighed in publicly on the issue had to admit that they too had not yet seen the poll, begging the question as to if there ever was a poll in the first place.

Putting that aside, it appears as if the poll was commissioned to accomplish one thing and one thing only, to scare the Congress of the People into submission. Because based on the information in the as of yet not published poll which, for some strange and unknown reason only seem to have polled two constituencies as if that was all that was required to make the point, the poll that was never a poll left many unasked questions in its wake, and I thought I would like to request of the good people of NACTA  that if they ever do bother to actually conduct a poll, to ask other more substantial questions, especially where the COP is concerned.

But why say that it appeared to be purposed only to silence the COP? In courtrooms worldwide judges are mindful to guide lawyers as to the way they ask questions so as to protect the person being questioned from being trapped by little or no choice. The classic question posed as “Have you stopped beating your wife” presupposes you to be a wife beater, because in an environment where you are only allowed to answer yes or no, a 'yes' answer assumes that you used to beat her, and a 'no' answer means that you still do. See the quandary? To presuppose a desired outcome through the couching of the question tells the listener exactly what they want to hear, but we all know in reality nothing is limited to only two choices. Even experienced police officers tell that when dealing with disputes between persons that there are always three sides to every story; your side, my side, and the truth.

Basing questions on the viability of the Congress of the People as a political party as part of the People's Partnership labors the COP with all of the sins of all of its partners simply because the COP is held to a higher standard by the electorate first, and then by cunning politicians who know only too well that in the team sport that politics is, the compromises that have to happen if governance is at all to occur makes that position a lie from in front, prompting Niccolo Machiavelli to coin the phrase that has since been bastardized and attributed to Basdeo Panday, that politics has no relation to morals. Imagine asking that same question to the same public but prompting with the preface, “Would you vote for the Congress of the People if it left the People's Partnership?”

Imagine the response triggered by such a prefix, to a jaded public desperate for something, anything like decency and morality in our politics, whose one and only grouse with the COP that it is STILL  a part of the PPG, can you imagine the numbers? But forget the COP having any chance at success as a stand alone party for a minute, have those in the United National Congress who are rumored to have commissioned that poll that never was a poll thought for a second the vast gash that an exiting COP would leave in all of their intentions, and the size of the hemorrhage of votes, especially in the questionably polled east west corridor?

The UNC may boast of having members in seats such as Diego Martins West, Central and North East, but their collective numbers together especially in relation to the post-apocolyptical 2010 to 2015 term would be barely enough to form a line at a St. James roti shop. No, for the People's Partnership to have value in the 2015 elections it needs the COP more than ever now, and like the old time calypso about the two bards fighting over what was more important in the pot after it was cooked, the hambone that flavored it or the rice that could be eaten, to the politically savvy the COP brings even more this time around and may well be responsible for the pot itself.

In the card game 'All Fours' the worst thing to hold in a six card game is the ace and the jack, because with the king and queen still out there to hang you, that hand is referred to as laugh and cry. That is where the UNC finds itself today and it would do well to stop the nonsense where the COP is concerned because, while it is the bigger more established party with war chests (plural) of campaign money, without the COP to bring some semblance of acceptability if not credibility outside the sixteen seats that they could safely call safe, they might well find themselves crying all the way to the Opposition side of the house.

A Healthy Response...

As some of you may know the Minister of Health and I have been having a bit of a public disagreement over the deplorable state of our ambulance service and by extension the public health sector, and while some have taken to making this political I have absolutely no interest in going down those roads with this most serious of issues.

I reject the notion that four and a half years was not enough time to fix our ambulance service and casualty department if not our health sector as a whole, and i dismiss the idea that the last administration's mismanagement is responsible for ours.

The truth of the matter is that nothing of substance has been done to reinvent what we have lamented for years to be a dysfunctional caricature of a public health service, yet it boggles my mind that all of this time and money spent, we have no improvements of any value to show for it.

Yes i am thankful that a Children's Hospital is under construction and that the Tobago Hospital was finally finished. I applaud the re-purposing of the Chancery Lane complex into an addition to the San Fernando General Hospital, yet our people are still dying waiting for an ambulance if one ever bothers to show up, are treated worse than animals if they ever need emergency treatment at our casualty departments, and even worse than that should they require a longer hospital stay.

In response the Minister of Health has taken to attacking me for speaking out, but how much longer must we wait?

Blaming the staff, the systems and the equipment for the sorry state of affairs reminds me of the statement attribute to Confucius, who said "Only a poor workman blames his tools."

I put to the Minister of Health and the entire national community that this is simply not good enough, that the blame game is tired, and that the Minister himself has to accept the epic failures of his term in office.

My recommendation to him is to cease the defensive posture and the public sniping and either get to work fixing what passes for our health sector or step down and make space for someone who can.

We need nothing less than the declaration of a public state of emergency on our health sector where all of the resources of state are made available to bring relief to the public in the soonest possible time. The old people say the only way to eat an elephant is one bite at a time. Start there. Fix Casualty. Make our Emergency Response the envy of the civilized world. We have the money to do it, so why not the political will? Remove the ambulances service from under the Ministry of Health and reassign it to the Ministry of National Security. Not out of spite, but because the Ministry of National Security is already in the business of emergency response and possesses advanced and sophisticated tools and technology through the National Operations Centre to control, manage, dispatch and monitor. This could be done in the immediate short term and bring real and substantial relief.

We also need to release the burden on the Casualty Departments and on the public by the creation of at least forty one Health centers compete with emergency rooms set up to treat with minor emergencies open twenty four hours a day seven days a week, leaving the real casualty departments to treat with the life threatening stuff.

Finally the beds. If we cannot privatize the hospital service then surely we can privatize the property management and security of our facilities. There are Companies that specialize in building maintenance, serve and equipping, and if we do this, if we can leave nothing but the medical management to the medical staff, we would create an environment where everyone is encouraged to succeed.

This is not rocket science but ideas and suggestions, and as sure as i am that there are better ideas and suggestions out there equally workable, I am equally sure that we are blessed to have some marvellous medical professionals who, if motivated to, could make this country's health sector something that serves the people instead of frustrating them. Whatever is the obstacle to progress that is retarding this type of redevelopment needs to be identified and removed, but please, don't waste my time telling me that low level public servants are the source of our concern. Trinidadians are by and large good people, and it has been my experience that those who choose to work in health are usually those with a heart for people and service. We are doing something wrong if our own people are against us, and perhaps we need to be honest with our introspection if what we want in the end is a health sector that serves us all.