Former United National Congress activists have joined the Oilfield Workers Trade Union and the Movement for Social Justice to create a new entity called Citizens Intervention (CI). However founders of the group are insisting it is not a political party.
CI was launched yesterday by founder of Democracy Watch and former UNC attorney general Ramesh Lawrence Maharaj and MSJ political leader David Abdulah at Royal Hotel in San Fernando. The group’s first town hall meeting and public forum will take place at Plaisance Park Community Centre, Pointe-a-Pierre, on Thursday from 6 pm. Among those listed to speak are OWTU president general Ancel Roget, political analyst Indera Sagewan-Ali and former Oropouche West MP Mikela Panday.
Abdulah said CI was intended to educate the public about issues of the day. He said political parties were guilty of engaging in mass rallies where there were “whistles, horns, smoke and mirrors,” rather than public education.
“The Citizens Intervention is going to be a series of public meetings, town hall meetings throughout T&T, which will take place between now and sometime before the elections 2015. We feel it is necessary for there to be a serious discussion of the very real and important issues that affect our country and which affect citizens individually,” he said.
“Citizens are no wiser about the fundamental issues as a result of the general political discourse coming from the platform. They are about bells and whistles, smoke and mirrors and whistles and horns, it is not about the real issues.”
Saying T&T faced a crisis of leadership where there was an absence of clear vision, specific policies and ideas, Abdulah added: “We have a crisis of all of our institutions, from the Office of the President, to the parliament to the Cabinet, the judiciary, the service commissions, the integrity commission, the justice system, all of the institutions have collapsed.”
Meanwhile, Maharaj said the government must be held accountable. “I do not think that this government has accounted to the population on the issue of crime. The crime situation has become worse, the criminal gangs problem has become worse, we have a situation now where in a holy place someone can be murdered,” Maharaj said, referring to the murder of PNM supporter Daniel Bostic last week at the San Fernando Jama Masjid.
“I want the Prime Minister to answer to this country about how is it, that she sat down with her Attorney General and agreed that Section 34 alone, out of a whole act of Parliament, should be proclaimed into law,” Maharaj said. Both men said they would not be joining the Third Force, T&T’s newest political party.
Abdulah said it seemed the Third Force was shopping around for an office. He also said that the MSJ will be disclosing how many seats it intended to contest in due course.