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Speaker:The Honourable Basdeo Panday, Prime Minister of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago
Date: June 20, 2000
Occasion: Luncheon of the Tobago Chapter of the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce at Mt. Irvine Bay Hotel, Tobago.
My Dear Friends:
The Chairman of the Tobago Chapter of the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce,
Mr. Winston Gordon;
Members of the Management Committee of the Chamber;
Members of the Tobago Chamber;
Special Guests;
My Dear Friends:
Let me, first of all, thank you for inviting me to have lunch with you.
Let me next thank you for the lunch we have shared.
Let me now engage you in the principal business of the day.
That item has been billed as the Feature Address by the Prime Minister.
I rather suspect that here in Tobago, another Feature Address by an occupant of political office could bring you close to satiation.
What you might welcome would be for me to break the tradition and put aside my Feature Address, and move directly to your questions.
If the media is indeed a mirror of the society, answers to your questions, not my prepared statement would be your preferred option anyhow.
My Friends:
You would have noticed that in the salutations at the start of my remarks, I carefully avoided the standard from of address, "Ladies and Gentlemen".
That�s because I don�t want your questions to be in any way inhibited by Samuel Johnson�s assertion that:-
"Questioning is not the mode of conversation among gentlemen."
Let me, at this point, attempt to answer some of your questions in advance, so that we may move to unexplored territory.
The situation in the Health Sector?
Yes, it is my strongly held conviction that every worker, Prime Ministers included, should give a fair day�s work for a fair day�s pay.
With obvious relevance, I would also add that designs are in progress for the construction of an $85 million dollar Scarborough Hospital.
Related to health, and essential to life, tourism, related to everything, water projects, valued at $42 million are underway at Courland, Hillsborough, Richmond, Carnbee and Government Farm.
These projects will deliver reliable water supplies to more than 22,000 persons.
The bottom line is Water for All.
"Clause 7"?
Father Christian Peireira, the Diocesan Administrator, put it best:
"If we obeyed the laws set out by our God, there would be no need for man-made laws."
I answer every criticism of Clause 7 with a question:
Is it your intention, to publicly take an action which is reasonably likely, in all the circumstances, to offend, insult, humiliate or to intimidate other persons or a group of persons, because of the race, origin, or religion of such person and, to take such action with the intention of inciting racial or religious hatred?
If it is your intention to do all of this, then you would, conceivably, be in contravention Clause 7 of the Equal Opportunity Act.
If you think that this is a good thing, you would, understandably, insist that people be allowed to proceed with impunity to take, publicly, actions to offend, insult, humiliate or intimidate others because of their race, because of their religion, because they are from Tobago, or from Trinidad; and you would, conceivably, insist that people so inclined, be permitted to proceed to take such actions with impunity, even though those actions are taken with the intention of inciting racial or religious hatred.
That, my friends, could never be the choice of an enlightened society, if only because most of the fifty wars that have been fought in the last decade of the last century, wars in which close to 10 million people were killed, were because of religious and ethnic differences.
This leads me to the your next question, ladies and gentlemen.
FREEDOM OF EXPRESSION?
Absolutely.
But not Absolute!
Never Absolute.
That�s neither the letter nor the spirit of the Constitution.
The African-American poet, Langston Hughes, provides an answer for me in
" The Black Man Speaks":
"I swear to the Lord; I still can�t see; Why Democracy means; Everybody but me."
Your question on THA/Central Government Relations?
"It is the mind which creates the world about us, and even though we stand side by side in the same meadow, my eyes will never see what is beheld by yours, my heart will never stir to the emotions by which yours are touched."
George Gissing provided that answer to your question on THA/Central Government Relations.
I must also add, in the words of Oliver Wendell Holmes:
"I find the great thing in the world is not so much where we stand, as in what direction we are moving."
And, in our case, in what direction we are looking.
In response to your questions on crime and other problems the country faces, I turn to Napoleon:
"To do all that one is able to do is to be a man.
"To do all that I would like to do is to be God."
We have, however, succeeded in accomplishing some things.:
- We now have better trained, better equipped and more effective Police Officers.
- We also have a better trained, better equipped and more effective Defence Force.
- We have attracted and sustained record levels of investment.
- We have shaped a climate in which an average of ten thousand new jobs have been created every year.
- We are democratising education in the fullest, most fundamental sense.
Two new Secondary Schools for Tobago.
And three Early Childcare and Education Centres.
Early this morning, I confirmed at Shaw Park that we are working with the THA to create Secondary School places for the more than 700 children who were not assured of secondary school places
1368 children took the Common Entrance exam.
Only 660 of those children were assigned to Secondary Schools.
No child will be left behind.
This means a that there will be a place in a Secondary School for every child, a full year ahead of the schedule I had set when I announced in March of 1998, that the Common Entrance Exam would be abolished in the year 2000.
In spite of current events, major Health Sector Reform is in progress
Let us look at Trinidad and Tobago�s increasingly positive economic performance since 1995:
- Real Growth in GDP was 6.9 per cent in 1999
That�s three times the rate of growth in the international economy last year.
- We brought unemployment down to 11.7 per cent, from 17.2 per cent in 1995.
- GDP Per Capita, measured in United States Dollars, increased from $4, 268 in 1995 to over $5000 last year.
- We have kept the cost of living in check, bringing the inflation rate down to under 4 per cent last year.
- Import Cover had expanded to more than 6 months, last year, nearly double what it was in 1995.
- Gross International Reserves, at US$1.3 billion in 1999, was double the 1995 figure.
- Net Foreign Reserves stood at US$1 billion last year, more than double what is was in 1995.
- The country�s Fiscal Deficit at the end of last year, 0.1 per cent of GDP, was a tiny 5 per cent of the 0.2 per cent of the GDP where it was in 1995.
Trinidad and Tobago�s miniscule Fiscal Deficit, as a percentage of the GDP, makes this country unique and envied globally, among industrialised as well as developing nations.
And you may have forgotten, my friends, all of this since 1995 with no new taxes.
Ladies and Gentlemen:
At the risk of being accused of favouring the Parasitic Oligarchy, I submit that the Tobago Chapter and the Trinidad and Tobago Chamber of Industry and Commerce, will readily say that my Government has served the country well since we were given the chance in November of 1995.
Thank you for taking my answers, ladies and gentlemen.
I know that you have some other questions.
I am prepared to answer them.