Let us put our PNM disaster in perspective.
All great civilisations are defined and founded by their feats of engineering. Mesopotamia has the ziggurats, ancient Egypt the pyramids and Pharos of Alexandria, there are the cities of the Indus Valley Civilisation, the Acropolis and Parthenon stand out from ancient Greece, the Roman Empire had the aqueducts, Via Appia and Colosseum, the Mayan, Inca and Aztec Empires had the great cities and pyramids, and China its Great Wall, for example.
The great civilisations from which our ancestors came are full of examples of the ingenuity and skill of ancient civil engineers. It is a heritage in our blood and DNA.
It is these efforts of civilisation which make the deserts bloom, re-direct the waters, protect us from extremities, and connect one area to another, allowing humans to settle all over the world, even in some of the harshest climates and environments. Humans have used ingenuity, science, and creativity to do so. It takes engineering and constant hard work to keep civilisation going, and to prevent the bush from coming back in and taking over.
In Trinidad and Tobago we have the task of creating a new civilisation for the world.
Trinidad and Tobago is not one of the world’s uninhabitable areas, unfit for human civilisation. Our environmental challenges are small and easily solvable compared to the rest of the world.
There are simple engineering solutions, which require the civilised human tasks of continuous maintenance and improvement.
The PNM, however, as demonstrated since 1956 has no maintenance culture, no future-vision, no will to create and sustain a civilisation here. We see this with the inheritance they have squandered, ruined and caused to dilapidate, not only from the departing colonials in 1962, but even from the UNC-led People’s Partnership in 2015.
Because the PNM are so backward, uncreative, lazy, and parasitic, all they can do in the face of the devastation caused by their neglect, is blame, bouff, and berate our citizens.
Our ancestors built this country, every nook and cranny of it: from the builders of our capital city, to the settlements on the hills surrounding it — which required much insufficiently recognised effort, skill, engineering intelligence, and hard work — to the villages and towns all across the country, in every corner. Our ancestors built and settled these islands.
The PNM do not know how to build. Like soucouyants, they suck off of others. Their legacy is destruction.
They destroy what they inherited: destroy the railroad, destroy Caroni Limited, destroy Petrotrin.
They cannot even maintain civilisation. How, then, can they expect to build it? The backward movement in every area of life under the PNM is devastating.
On the other hand, the UNC has demonstrated every time its commitment to build.
Despite the UNC only being in government for two full parliaments, and both times in partnership with others, those 11 years are equivalent, in terms of development, to the 50 years under the PNM: the roads, the bridges, the schools, the expansion of infrastructure, the educational institutions, the housing, the building of human capacity and training, it goes on and on.
This is perhaps why people erroneously think that the PNM and UNC were in office for the same amount of time. Nothing is further from the truth. What may cause the confusion is that the UNC did the same amount of work — or more — in in every area of the society. Imagine if the UNC had 50 years, 30 of them uninterrupted. This country would definitely have been first world status by now.
The PNM are such a curse on this country, with such perverted thinking, that they actually make fun of the UNC’s extensive program of work. They think it’s funny to call the UNC a “box drain government”, when what the UNC was doing was implementing engineering solutions all over the country. Creating civilisation and reclaiming the bush.
Keith Rowley and the PNM criticise the building of schools, giving free laptops to all Form One students, placing all children from the SEA into full-time secondary schools. What sort of mad people are they?
The UNC was an infrastructure and engineering government, and we are proud of all the box drains that were built around the country — and so much more than that, of course — to improve and enhance our built and natural environment.
During the PNM-induced, entirely foreseeable and preventable flooding disasters, the PNM, with their lazy, backward, parasitic thinking, blame victims for building where the flooding is. The fact is that the PNM Government are to blame for not maintaining the infrastructure, or expanding capacity as necessary. It is typical PNM style to buff, berate and blame. They are utterly incapable of running a civilised society.
Every flooding disaster is a direct result of PNM.
The disasters which our citizens face, the loss of property, the loss of life, the loss of income, the loss of productivity, are not the result of so-called natural disasters. This is clearly the result of the PNM’s parasitic government model.
In order for us to build a true and lasting civilisation in Trinidad and Tobago, the PNM must go, once and for all. The UNC will continue to build and extend our ancestor’s work.