Local government elections will be referendum

THE EDITOR: At a recent public meeting, the Prime Minister was quoted as saying, "There is one singular issue in this local government election: Are you for reform or are you against reform?”

Wishful thinking on his part of course, since this local government election is a referendum on his eight-year leadership of our country, and the one singular issue that is uniting citizens is the scourge of crime.

This is why as hard as he tries to change and spin the narrative, Rowley's fear of an electorate that was denied the opportunity to vote since December, when these elections were constitutionally due, will be realised in due course.

And to be clear, spin is the PM's last recourse, including at an earlier public meeting, where he resorted to pulling the race card out of thin air, and also, desperately reaching back in time, two decades ago to be precise, to talk about the Piarco airport project.

The goodly PM seems to be bereft of ideas and of relevant issues. The irony is that even if the issue was really about local government reform, as he suggests, it would still amount to a negative for his government, since the obvious question is – why wasn’t reform pursued over the course of his eight years in office? Why only now is this reform so critical?

The answer to that is simple: Rowley's stint, after which I suspect many will see him as being the weakest and worst prime minister in our history, is characterised by nothing accomplished.

Hence the reason he feels the need to attack and blame everyone else when really the blame is much closer, in the halls of government. It is an attempt to distract from his own failings and shortcomings, examples of which are many and varied – a flagging economy, high food and fuel prices, poor education, an ill health system and of course, rampant, vicious and uncontrollable crime.

TIM TEEMAL

St James