THE PM OF OZ

The PNM’s message, TT’s PM cum Executive President complained, which one assumes is mainly Manning’s message, was not getting out as it should. In its place, the voters were being handed a lot of poppycock or MIS-information about his Govern-ment’s programmes, Manning alleged, and therefore, the PNM needed a website so the public could get HIS information.

Then all would be well. TT’s citizens would simply have to click on www.pnm.org.tt — the website’s home page is a garish gold — and they would comprehend that there is no reason to worry about Government expenditure or the rising cost of living or that ends no longer meet or that they can barely feed their families. It was as if the PM was saying, “Just click your heels Dorothy and you’ll be back in Kansas!”

Since the Prime Minister so strongly believes in the power of websites, he should have gone surfing the Net this past week and visited www.newsday.co.tt where the Quick Vote poll asked Newsday readers whether the Government was doing enough to curb inflation. Nearly 500 people said no. Fewer than 30 said yes. If that vote, unscientific as it may be, is not a condemnation of his Government’s economic policies then nothing will convince the “Energy PM” as he is described on his (the PNM’s) website that he needs to start slow spending, control price increases and not so easily dismiss the views of others.

Many of the people of Trinidad and Tobago are suffering, but this according to Manning, is misinformation, not his information. Four years ago when the PNM won the election, the citizenry could afford to go to the grocery. Now it can’t. There are many skyscrapers and complexes going up. Down below Trinbagonians are catching as catch can. But Manning would have them go to a PNM website for the “truth.” Can the populace eat the large photos of the Prime Minister posted there? Can they use PNM propaganda to pay their bills?

Where Patrick Manning really needs to go is not to websites. Instead of spending his time in cyberspace, he should journey to a real supermarket one Saturday morning. He’ll see his people grumble, curse and steups as they do every weekend. He’ll discover then that basics have become luxuries; that shoppers spend more every week and get less for it; he’ll overhear worried whispered exchanges like, “You think we need so much meat this week, honey? And the dogs don’t really have to eat everyday do they? They won’t die.” In other words, he’ll learn that development cannot be measured by the number of kilowatts a country uses, as he pretends.

The Prime Minister doesn’t need to launch a new website; he needs to get in touch with his citizenry and has to get a fresh philosophy to replace his “edifice complex.” He also needs to cease upbraiding those who are advising him to put some of his grand projects on hold and those who are warning about the nation’s food bill and inflation and about the depression of the agricultural sector. He certainly ought to stop expecting the rest of the populace to settle for tiny wage increases when he and his wife who he appointed Education Minister gave themselves two huge salary hikes in the last four years and now get a whopping $78,000 a month, plus perks. Most of his citizens don’t make $78,000 in a year. Patrick Manning doesn’t have a clue what it takes to get by from month to month, not when he and Hazel live by and large for free and probably bank close to three-quarters of a million annually, but in his view, it is his citizenry that is “misinformed.

It must have felt good to be a Manning last weekend when the family reportedly got together to celebrate the recent birthdays of the Mister and Missus. Everyone must have been looking in the pink of health and why not when they can fly to Cuban hospitals for treatment and check ups on the State. The Mannings would have been able to enjoy a delicious meal cooked for them in their rent free house, drink wine provided for them by the State; watch cable TV without a worry in the world about how to pay all their utility bills.

That’s what the rest of the population would like to do: celebrate a birthday without having to worry about not then being able to pay this bill or that utility because cake and ice cream, pelau and some drinks just don’t cost what they used to. What the people of TT don’t want is a spendthrift Prime Minister who always believes that he is right and that everyone else is wrong and who has a website built to prove that Kansas is only a click away, that is to say, all we have to do is go to www.pnm.org.tt, follow the gold Balisier road and we’ll be on our way to the First World.

smills@trini.com,

www.newsday.co.tt