Wasting ‘our’ money

This despite the cries of people from all over the country that it is waste of their tax dollars. It seems that every other day they come with another reason why we "need" this sports complex. It is like they are trying to convince themselves and us on why they insist on building it. The latest is "Caribbean Unity" and using cricket to bolster that unity and then it being a "back-up for Grenada" for the 2007 Cricket World Cup games. Did Grenada ask us for such help?

Mr Manning has even resorted to pitting "urban dwellers" versus "rural" and "northern" versus "southern" residents in his attempt to "sell" the idea of the stadium to the country. Saying that if the sports complex was to be built in Mucurapo the objections would be less or non-existent.

TT is too small a country for such divisive ideas to take hold and the people are smart enough to realise what he is attempting to do with his rhetoric — divide and conquer. What I believe he fails to realise is that people from all areas of the country are against this project, not for where it is being located, but because they see the spending of this $850M as a total waste of "their money," especially when so many other infrastructural developmental projects are so badly needed in the country.

They see that this money could be better spent to provide much needed improvements in the health care and education systems, school repairs and building new ones, police stations, court houses, equipment for the fire service (fire hydrants and a reliable water supply system in the event of another catastrophic fire in downtown Port-of-Spain) and police services, road and bridge repairs, flood control, water and electricity projects (to those same rural communities), the cultural arts centre, community centres and many more much worthy ways to spend that $850M.

That is what the people object to: the what, not the idea of spending the money. Yet it seems that Mr Manning and his cronies fail to see the error of their ways and are marching forward with this massive waste of the country’s limited resources.

That money TT is earning from the latest world oil prices boom is burning a hole in Mr Manning’s pocket (and you wondered why he is Minister of Finance — to control the country’s purse strings as he sees fit) and he must spend it before it disappears from the treasury.

I guess these people think they are talking to fools! We need to show them we are not foolish and we must continue to speak out against the wasteful spending of "our" money. They must realise they are the "caretakers of our money;" they are not the "owners" of it; to spend as they see fit and without due consideration as to our feelings or views in the ways they spend it. How arrogant and obstinate of them! The ironic fact is that if the UNC was in office and had come up with such a proposal, Manning and his party would have decried the idea as the waste that it is. This time it is not only UNC sycophants who are against this project, but also right-thinking PNM supporters as well who see it for what it is: a big money white elephant and a way to "blow" almost a billion of the country’s dollars, on what?

So, I believe it is time we seek new alternatives to these political leaders — dinosaurs — on both sides of the aisle, who will respect the views of the citizenry they lead, and not take us for granted as this present set does. We are not all blind followers, we have a brain and can think too!

It is time to hold them all accountable for the way they do their jobs — for us. This goes for the mayors, regional corporations representatives, all the way up to the people elected to the central government. They should shape up or we ship them out. It is time we take back our Government, or take control of it for the first time in our history. The future of our children is at stake here. So the time to act is now!

KELVIN C JAMES SR

Port-of-Spain