By Sean Douglas
Monday, July 14 2008
newsday.co.tt
PRIME Minister Patrick Manning, despite his strenuous denials, could well make a second bid to become TT’s Executive President after he presented the 42nd PNM Annual Convention at Chaguaramas with extracts of a “working paper” that looked suspiciously like a second version of his Draft Constitution which provoked a public outcry in 2006.
The latest document proposes not only a “presidential system of Government” in Manning’s own words, but also seems to severely curtail the independence of the Parliament, Cabinet, Judiciary, Office of Director of Public Prosecutions (DPP), and Permanent Secretaries in the Public Service.
Continue reading Manning’s second bid for presidency
As if this country is not burdened by more than its fair share of woes, I don’t know if I should laugh or cry over expressions of outrage by those who see the sky caving in on Trinidad and Tobago because government postponed Local Government elections for the third time. What, pray, is the big fuss over staging local elections? The municipalities and corporations continue to exist-note I did not say function-as they always have, elections or no elections. In other words, they did nothing to benefit citizens during their official tenure. And they continue to do nothing as they await reforms promised by the Government since 2002.
I just had to comment on last Sunday’s Express article by Ms Sheila Rampersad in which she expressed her great disappointment over Education Minister Esther Le Gendre’s attack on Mickela Panday in Parliament.
I was in employment in the Public Service during the period when the meritocracy factor slowly and surreptitiously began to assert itself as the preferred alternative criterion to seniority as the determining consideration to effect promotions. This development constituted as an aspect of Performance Management in Public Service Reform. 
T&T is not a failed state; it is a state whose socio/economic policies, ineffective leadership and lack of vision is failing its citizens. It is a state which has consistently failed to effectively integrate large sections of the African and East Indian populations into the wealth creating mechanism that would give them a stake in the country. This failure manifests itself in misdirected values, social deviance, questionable morals and increasing violence. Consequently, with the exception of the elite, a struggling middle class and an increasing number of foreigners, the great majority of citizens in this small but oil rich nation remain poor; marginally more than hewers of wood and drawers of water.
Where do the neophyte Ministers of the PNM regime get the idea that taxpayers’ money is not taxpayers’ business? Was this what they were taught at their retreat last year, which was also at taxpayers’ expense, to learn about their responsibilities? Or are they merely falling into the easy contempt with which politicians too often treat the citizens of this country?
With NFM announcing last week that the price of wheat flour is set to rise another 29 per cent, there was the usual groaning and moaning from consumers, blaming “de govament” for rising food prices. Really, you’d think these people have just landed from Mars, that they are unaware of the global food crisis, of inflation eating into people’s pockets just about everywhere in the world. You’d think, too, that by now everyone would have adjusted their spending habits to meet escalating costs through focussing on “needs” as opposed to “wants”.
THE Law Association yesterday questioned the legality of the “lock down” of Richplain by the Defence Force who set up camp in the Diego Martin community after the Father’s Day murder of Corporal Ancil Wallace and his best friend Noel Charles.