STORIES

Page 2 ISSUE 146 Friday 4th MARCH, 2016
IF I WERE THE PRIME MINISTER OF T&T
I WOULD BE CAREFUL NAMING
THINGS OR PEOPLE!
A weekly column by JACK WARNER
If I were the Prime
Minister of Trinidad
and Tobago, I would
be very careful about the
way I go about naming
things or people.
I can understand that in
the heat of passion restraint
at times becomes unbridled.
But when the threat especially
in our society where
“bad” has the connotation
of “good,” I would be very
careful about how I name
things and people if I were
the Prime Minister especially
of Trinidad and Tobago.
One could have literally
felt his pain.
Every parent could feel
his anger, his venom and his
sense of hopelessness as he
addressed the untenable issue
of school violence.
One could have experienced
angst in his voice because
here is a Prime Minister
who defied all odds
and succeeded having not
emerged from a home of affluence.
But to conclude that children
are monsters and parents
are the ones accused
of raising these monsters is
unacceptable.
As a Prime Minister, I
would never make a general
statement like that.
One would normally degenerate
into name-calling,
name-blaming and victim
shaming when a sense of
frustration overwhelms one.
And this is evident in the
Police officers, community
activists,
educators, business
persons and social
workers are among a
group of 35 persons to
receive training as community
mediators under
the Canadian Government
funded, Improved
Access to Justice in the
Caribbean (IMPACT
Justice) Project.
IMPACT Justice is a
five-year regional justice
sector reform project
which is being implemented
from within the
practice of this Government,
which is developing a norm
of highlighting problems
without offering any hope
that a solution is in sight to
deal with the malady identified.
Throughout the budget
presentation last October
that was evident and even
now after some six months
in office and a plethora of
corrupt acts mentioned
inside and outside the Parliament
not a single person
has been brought before
the courts to answer for
wrongdoing on the part of
the previous administration.
Despite all the brouhaha
about recession and the need
for all citizens to tighten
their belts, the Government
seems scripted and unable
to shift away from their preordained
plan which was
orchestrated clearly long before
a recession was declared
in Trinidad and Tobago.
So their approach seems
static, unable to change and
in the face of frustration
rather than seek to provide
an assurance that would
encourage citizens to rally
around Isasha’s “Let’s do
this,” once again their arrogance
is creating thick layers
of dissatisfaction, which
is separating the PNM Government
from the people
and even from its own base.
As the Prime Minister, I
would have realized before I
PM Dr. KEITH ROWLEY
spoke that the women under
attack would have included
a large number of mothers
in my constituencies.
Most of them are single
parent mothers forced to
work long hours at KFC and
Royal Castle or at some security
firm and live in communities
without the support
needed to help them
raise their children.
No homework centres are
available to help their children,
no extra curricular activities
in the neighbourhood
and no programmes from
community development
to create a safe space, Mr.
Prime Minister, none, not
one. Go to Greenvale, for example,
and see for yourself.
As I read the comment, I
cringed for the mothers especially
in Laventille who
for fifty years voted for the
People’s National Movement
(PNM) but never benefitted
from their tenure in
office.
If the major pan side, an
iconic representation of the
people from the hill, had
to migrate from among its
own, one cannot help but
understand how forgotten
these communities are.
Among the mothers
would be young girls some
of them forced into motherhood
by gangsters because
the system failed to protect
them and now without any
help, any experience and
any hope are forced on their
own to raise their children.
Some of the them are little
teenage girls who the school
system forget and whom the
health and social system ignored.
These are the mothers
who are being accused
of raising monsters.
As I reflect it is not the
children who are monsters.
It is the Governments we
represent.
IMPACT Justice hosts community mediation training in Grenada
Caribbean Law Institute
Centre, UWI, Cave Hill
Campus.
The training, which takes
place from February 29th
– March 4th, 2016, at the
Coyaba Beach Resort, Grenada,
falls under IMPACT
Justice’s broader alternative
dispute resolution (ADR)
component. The goal is to
build the capacity for community
mediation services
around the region in an effort
to reduce the burden on
the courts.
The regional justice reform
project is slated to develop
or increase the pool
of community mediators
in 13 CARICOM Member
States and assist in the development
of a legislative
framework within which
mediations may be conducted.
IMPACT Justice
has already conducted community
mediation training
in Barbados, Dominica, Jamaica,
St. Kitts and Nevis
and St. Vincent and the
Grenadines.
Prof. Velma Newton,
IMPACT Justice Regional
Project Director, stated,
“We are seeking to increase
the number of individuals
who are available to assist
in solving disputes at the
community level before
they escalate and have to
be taken to the court. The
idea of using mediation
is to redirect some cases
away from the courts.”
Although this is the
first community mediation
training programme
undertaken in Grenada,
the Project facilitated a
Court-connected Mediation
Refresher course for
mediators in Grenada in
March, 2015.
It is the PNM, UNC,
COP, NAR, MSJ, NJAC,
WFP, DLP and the concoction
of political parties who
did nothing for our dispossessed
people, nothing to
make them feel as citizens.
We are the monsters not
the children who are symptoms
of our failure.
When students are left unsupervised
by teachers who
skip school to run their own
business or to attend classes
at the university who really
is the monster?
When students are allowed
to skip classes unknown
to parents without
being sanctioned by the
teacher who is the monster?
When our education system
went into shift mode
and placed parents in a situation
where they must leave
their children unsupervised
for long hours in the day,
who were the monsters?
When over 300 women
have been murdered in domestic
violence over the last
10 years, who are the monsters?
When over 4000 citizens
have been murdered over
the last 10 years who are the
monsters?
When mounds of garbage
remain piled up in communities
endangering the lives
of citizens and sullying the
environment, who are the
monsters?
When crime is allowed
to run rampant and law enforcement
turns a blind eye
who are the monsters?
It is for these and many
Laventille
other reasons that if I were
the Prime Minister of Trinidad
and Tobago I would be
wary in calling the nation’s
children monsters and blaming
the mothers for creating
them.
As Prime Minister I
would put my brain in gear
before I put my mouth in
motion.
The response of the
Ministry of Education is
to remove these so-called
“monsters” from the school
system.
So what happens to them
now?
How will their education
be facilitated?
How will these young
men and women progress in
our society?
What are the opportunities
for change even if they
have currently embarked
upon the wrong road?
By removing these “monsters”
from the schools does
it make our communities
safer?
Does it mean that the children
in the school who were
objects of their attack are
now more secure or does it
mean that the threat still remains
but is located somewhere
else?
As the Prime Minister
of Trinidad and Tobago I
would pursue sustainable
solutions to deal with the
problem but to call our children
monsters and blame the
mothers for creating them is
unkind. That is something I
would never do if I were this
nation’s Prime Minister.