Ramesh says Cabinet reshuffle is a ‘joke’

“A NATIONAL joke by a Government that has failed to deliver after two years,” was former Attorney-General Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj’s response yesterday to Friday’s massive Cabinet reshuffle announced in Parliament by Prime Minister Patrick Manning. The reshuffle, Maharaj said, came in the midst of 9,000 sugar workers being sent home by Government’s closure of Caroni (1975) Ltd; Government’s displacing of squatters; escalating crime and rising poverty. Trinidad and Tobago was still plagued by such ills, Maharaj said, even after Government’s expenditure of billions of dollars. “That is why this Cabinet adjustment is a national joke.  It is an admission that Government has failed to deliver,” said Maharaj, who leads his National Team Unity party.

Maharaj made the comment before leaving for Tobago yesterday for a weekend of rest and private study. “After little over two years and after spending billions of dollars, our society is so fractured,” Maharaj added. He cited the fact that vendors,  farmers and squatters were currently in serious conflict with Government over their right to earn a livelihood.  Maharaj took a poke at the Opposition United National Congress, however, for being an ineffective force against the policies of the People’s National Movement administration. The reshuffle of the ministries, Maharaj said, would not change the policies of a Government which has set in motion the creating of a police state in the midst of all the ills they are yet to alleviate. Saying that he was extremely disturbed about rising crime and unemployment levels, he reiterated his call for the electorate to be given the constitutional guarantee to recall a Government.