Democracy abounds but no protests

Remember that in a democracy you can make yourself rich, poor or a fool, once you are within the law. In a democracy, riches are distributed unequally, causing many comments and protests, while in socialist states poverty is distributed equally, causing no protests.

In the last 18 months, many projects were stopped for whatever reasons and there were no protests.

So why now? The San Fernando to Point Fortin highway was stopped after billions of dollars were spent, resulting in a loss of jobs and there were no protests.

The waste water project was stopped when it was almost completed.

We will live to regret this decision when the droughts of the future make water scarce. No protests.

The Arima Hospital was stopped and is now being downsized. No protests.

The Tobago inter-island cargo carrier has come to a stop with little protest.

Although I have not read where the CSO released statistics to show that the country is in a recession, we know that is so. In a recession food (and waste water for agriculture) is of paramount importance.

So what action have we taken to increase food production? We put up the rice mill for sale because we cannot source parts that are available and we now want to purchase a cargo vessel and maintain it ourselves. Remember what caused us to place electrical generation in private hands a few years ago? Lack of maintenance.

Same machines with private management, no generation problems.

No protest on the sale of the rice mill.

Again we want to increase food production, so what do we do? Close down Caroni Green Ltd, a Government-owned food production company that is doing quite well. No protest.

We want to increase foreign visitors to Tobago so we closed down the Tourism Development Company.

No protests.

We are now building a road to Toco to increase tourism to Tobago.

Why? To shorten the time the boat takes to Tobago. In doing so we will now add four hours of land travel time to and from Toco and when there is a delay of the boat, for whatever reason, as is happening now, we will have to camp in the Toco forest until the next day.

During the September/October season when the waves are high on the North Coast and the shoreline is washing away, we will have to revert to the Port-of-Spain terminal so we will be maintaining two Tobago ports, a wet season port and a dry season port.

When an enterprising businessman carries out his action once on this road during the night, then that will be the end of subsidised tourism to Tobago.

We will be using scarce dollars to build this road to subsidise local tourists who carry curried duck, buss-up shot, alcohol and even bottled water on the boat to Tobago, adding little value to the Tobago economy.

ArcelorMittal, two methanol plants and a local steel plant were closed down with little protest.

A few years ago we closed down Caroni Ltd because God gave us oil and did not want us to be enslaved by agriculture, so we decided that Guyana will supply the rice, sugar, rum and fruits that were being produced by Caroni Ltd and we will barter these items for our expensive oil. No protests.

Today the options are reversed and we are now on our knees when we are talking to Guyanese officials.

We seem to be totally in love with all Guyanese now.

On the bright side, most of the men who lost their jobs recently will be employed in the soonto- be-constructed sawdust plant, where huge trees will be cut down in the Amazon forest and transported to south Trinidad where they will be sawn into chips and we will export these products. This will happen because Suriname, Guyana and French Guiana do not have the skills to saw these logs.

Another upcoming industry is the making of aluminium products from imported ingots. The smelting process will use electricity and not natural gas, as recently mentioned in a newspaper report, so there will be no drawdown on our limited gas reserve. In Trinidad all our electricity is generated by the combustion of natural gas so if you use electricity, we will not conserve natural gas. Politicians must understand basic science.

Finally, a few years ago when the desal plant was on the drawing board, politicians vehemently protested, and quite rightly so, saying this process is really converting scarce natural gas to electricity.

Desalinated water is five to ten times more expensive to produce than water from catchment areas.

We have since expanded desal capacity at the expense of natural gas and waste water recovery.

We have not learned a thing because we are now building a desal plant in Tobago although we have no natural gas and Tobago has the right topography for collecting rain water and storing it in a manmade dams for use in the dry season.

When the gas runs out we will have neither water nor electricity because no one is looking at alternative electricity generation.