The insecure, insular PNM

THE EDITOR: The present PNM Government has not deviated from the pattern of poor performance that has characterised the many long years the party has spent in government.

The only area in which it has excelled has been in its ability to sell itself as a credible political force largely by the exaggerated boasts it repeatedly makes of its few meaningful accomplishments and the lofty (and chronically unfulfilled) promises it holds out to a gullible population.

There is perhaps no other political entity on the planet for which as large a chasm exists between what it says it would do and what it succeeds in doing. The PNM always blames others for its pathetic failures. The organisational infrastructure on which the PNM perennially boasts is one that its first political leader walked into as a done deal. He walked into a ready-made organisation — the Teachers’ Education and Cultural Association and its offshoot, the People’s Education Movement. He negotiated a name-change of the latter entity as he commandeered its leadership in 1956. So let us not give him credit for creating an organisation.

He was invited initially to be a consultant to these existing organisations which, through the hard work of their leaders, had embarked on a project of education and empowerment of poor Trinidadians through a structured hierarchical system that the PNM later adopted and adapted as its own. It was these organisations that made the PNM and not the other way around.

From its inception, the PNM’s intellectual culture has been one of “adoption” and “adaptation” of other people’s ideas. It has distinguished itself by its conspicuous inability for creative originality. It is a party that “regurgitates” rather than innovates.

This attitude of insecurity, insularism, and a paranoid unwillingness to open itself to public scrutiny are traits that permeated the persona of its founding political leader. Even the CIA sensed Eric Williams’ deep-seated feelings of personal insecurity. Recently declassified US documents have shed insight into what it calls Williams’ “anti-white” sentiment.

The singularly most noticeable personality trait that shines through his writings is his aggressive resentment of the attitude the British harboured toward West Indian people of colour. The greatest irony here is that Williams’ boast of being an intellectual giant was the fruit of British education. Trinidad’s reticence to allow the light at centre stage to shine on it was born of the insecurities of its early political leadership.

It is this willingness to keep us in a state of backwardness that is most irksome about the PNM. Over the decades of PNM government, corruption has been its benchmark. Corruption in the procurement and distribution of drugs under the purview of the Ministry of Health has always distinguished PNM governance.

At one time, the talk was that when a truckload of pharmaceuticals left C-40 (the central Chaguaramas warehouse), it would often reach its destination with most of its inventory missing and with no one able to account. Such stealing no doubt translated into an informal subsidy to private pharmacies and a drain on the national purse.

Further to this, that archaic system led to a confused and inefficient inventory system and ultimately loss of life. The current Minister of Health is always complaining about the cost of medicines.

The last government introduced My TT Card — a smart-card used to access CDAP drugs. Such a system brought rationality to drug procurement. It generated data on drug use, inventories, patient needs, patients’ records, prevented duplication and so saved money, reduced prescribing errors and streamlined the process. It, therefore, added value to the quality of life.

On October 31, a circular was sent from Nipdec to all pharmacies informing them that use of the My TT Card for accessing CDAP medicines was to be discontinued. The reason for this was that “the Government” could no longer pay the internet fees required for networking the system. How does this action stand up to the PNM’s boastful promise contained in its Vision 2030 which lists as its priority themes: “Putting people first: nurturing our greatest asset; delivering good governance and service excellence; improving productivity through quality infrastructure ...”

STEVE SMITH via e-mail