People must decide on moving Parliament

THE EDITOR: The decision to relocate Parliament from the Red House to ‘Patrick’s Place’ should be based on national consensus and not on personal power play. The desire to upheave and redefine a new space for our democratic practices has to be a decision of all and not the few in Parliament.

Parliamentarians and the Prime Minister, both the leading regime and Opposition, must remember that their business is about representing the entire population and not the “halves of wholes.” The sovereignty of the governing body is mandated and maintained by the masses, as such it is this same polity that revolutionises and revokes a party’s authority to govern. The Prime Minister must be mindful that the population of TT has matured politically, nationally and liberally since the early post-colonial days of divide and rule. There is no room for elitist, tyrannical crusades by the Office of the Prime Minister. Few can be hoodwinked by central authority and even those who are hoodlums have no respect for authority, so all loci of control are vulnerable to people predicates.

The job of government is to provide comprehensive and effective policies on how to deliver what people want, where and when. MPs are protagonists not antagonists. It seems that our puppet MPs should be sent to political classes so that they can learn how to propose and oppose competently on behalf of their constituents, rather than corrode the will of the populace with penchant party drivel. Trinidad and Tobago is desperate for capable, intelligent and efficient leadership, not desperadoes and dictators. The politicians or rather “parrot-technicians” need to rise above “manning-pursuits” and pursue man’s purpose — that is the rights due to each citizen of our nation.

The removal of the Parliament to a new location must be dictated by a united, national movement of the “people’s will” to maintain the liberal democratic tradition enshrined by the image and maintained in the halls of the “Red House.” The people must have the deciding vote on matters of national concern, and the political assembly (PNM and UNC) must remember this unless they are geared on  replacing our liberal representative democracy with the hegemony of “leftist” democratic centralism.

DR NSBM
Port-of-Spain