No winning hand in PM’s shuffle

OPPOSITION LEADER Basdeo Panday scoffed at the shuffling exercise of Cabinet Ministers by Prime Minister Patrick Manning last week and asked “How will that improve the lives of the population in any significant way? “It is the same people you are putting to do other jobs and when you consider that they failed in their first posting what do you expect now?” he asked.

Panday said, “The PM could shuffle the pack however he wants he would not get a wining hand like in a game of Rummy.” At the time, Panday was addressing a fair sized crowd at the party’s Monday meeting at the Couva South Constituency Office, under the chairmanship of Dr Hamza Rafeeq, MP for Caroni Central, who announced that the UNC’s National Congress would meet on Sunday, November 16, at Rienzi Complex, Mc Bean, Couva. On November 30, the National Assembly would meet at the same venue, he said. Panday recalled that “Manning had said that all a Minister needed to perform was common sense and a level head, but it might be better described as a common head and level sense, but one would ask, if the Ministers were doing a good job why move them?” He explained, “If a chair is not broken you would not mend it.  If the Ministers had common sense and a level head and were doing a good job why move them?

Remembering that he did not move some, it meant that those whom he moved were not successful in their jobs and, therefore, they were failures and non performers so he had to shuffle the pack,” Panday said. He also took a swipe at the new Minister of National Security, Martin Joseph and asked, “You think people would be less scared to walk the streets now?  You cannot be so naive as to believe that.” “The reshuffle will increase pressure in Parliament with the Speaker Barry Sinanan trying his best to pay back the PNM for the post that he holds,” Panday said. Panday described the Speaker as being “very biased but no matter what he does we have a job to do and we are going to do it regardless of his threats to us.” He said that he has been serving as as Member of Parliament for 27 years and “the Speaker now  wants to tell us how to speak but I recall that when he (Sinanan) was a member of Parliament he was Minister of Silence.”

Touching on the point of crime, Panday said that he felt vindicated when he attended a lecture by the former Mayor of New York (brought to TT by Clico) Rudy Giuliani who said that to succeed in the fight against crime one must have leadership, a vision, process and accountability. He noted that Government officials did not attend the lecture but “to me it was a tremendous experience  as I attended a session  that was full of common sense and humour.” When he heard what was done in New York to reduce crime, Panday was convinced that “the PNM had no clue in solving criminal activities in the country because they were part of the problem.” Panday said, “We will be carrying on the struggle to the best of our ability and one day victory will come to us, as we pursue a course of civil disobedience, boycott, and demonstrations.”