Category: COP
The local government manifestos released by the various parties for the elections on 26 Jul 2010 may be found below:
You can get some details about each LG area (e.g. contact details) from the official Ministry of Local Government website and this article posted by Christian Khabay on knowtnt.com.
According to the Trinidad Express, 386,830 out of the 998,787 total electors voted in Monday's local government election (LGE), giving a 39% turnout. This was marginally higher 2003's turnout, which was allegedly 38%. I can find no trustworthy LGE figures online - the EBC doesn't publish them. Perhaps they, like the public, don't think it's important - but, then, why do they publish the THA election figures (which is like Tobago's LGE)? If you think the info on Wikipedia is correct, think again: their 378,637 figure for voter turnout is 42% the total electors from the EBC's Annual List 2003 - the Express story quotes the EBC's current Communications Manager, Leslie Fitzpatrick, as stating the turnout back then was 38%. So, as with anything from Wikipedia, take their data with a bit of salt. {Read more}
Just a quick pointer - while the Government of the Republic of Trinidad and Tobago has put out the specifications for laptops that 'public' tender has started on (see the specs here), there were remarks made about a laptop in the local media (Newsday, perhaps? ) that did not do much to answer questions regarding a cheap laptop that India was making.
It has been unveiled, complete with video:
...The tablet computer, developed by researchers at the Indian Institute of Technology in Delhi and the Indian Institute of Science in Bengalooru, will eventually be made available to the public. It will run on an open source Linux operating system with Open Office software and can be powered by solar panel or batteries as well as mains electricity. It will have no hard drive but users will have access to a USB port, 2GB of memory and a video-conferencing facility, internet browsing...
Is the present government of Trinidad and Tobago agile enough to reverse course and accomodate this technology, or is their political inertia going to press the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago to pay exponentially more for a political promise made with no plan in actually assisting educators and children?
Time tells all.
I've just witnessed T&T's first national political debate prior to an election, televised live on CNMG's C TV (find the recorded video here). Here are my initial views.
First, I must, like others I've spoken with via facebook during the show, commend the T&T Debates Commission (TTDC) for facilitating the event, CNMG's C TV for broadcasting it over-the-air in T&T and over the Internet via their website (for free - take note Guardian Media Group), and the PNM and People's Partnership for agreeing to participate in this historic event. While critical analysis will follow in the hours and days ahead, constructive or otherwise, I am very grateful to all parties for taking such an important step to advance our political culture.
Here are some of the things I thought worked well. The TTDC published the debate format, and rules and guidelines for the participants, moderator, questioners and studio audience on their website so the public could assess beforehand. The TTDC also recognised (somewhat) the worth of social media in today's public relations strategies and created its own facebook page (as did C TV with its own pages for C News Live and First Up, their flagship programmes). {Read more}
From a distance, some emails came across that defined the specifications for the laptops that the citizens of Trinidad and Tobago will be paying for so that children can have them. No, the People's Partnership isn't giving them to the children - you are, out of your treasury. Being able to identify that means you are intelligent. Not being able to identify that means you are...
Before I post the specifications, I'll add my commentary. The hardware requirements for the systems are well defined, exceedingly so. As a software developer with over 20 years of experience and as a software developer who has worked as a technical lead on projects with budgets in excess of $1 million dollars U.S., I have some concerns. I believe you should too.
The logical progression to hardware requirements for such a project are: (1) Identifying the problems, (2) Identifying the software to be used to solve the problems, (3) Identifying the hardware that runs the software (this treats the operating system as an extension of the hardware).
What we have here is actually the complete reverse - which leads me to question the competency of those who are undertaking the project. I could delve into more detail with what is wrong with these specifications but I don't want to spend more thought fixing their specs than they spent in creating them.
In short: This is stupid but it meets the government's apparent requirement: Meeting a political party's promises while assuring that money is spent on something that will have no measurable benefit in the context of education of the children of Trinidad and Tobago.
Here are the requirements, as posted on the main computing list of Trinidad and Tobago:
{Read more}
I first asked this question in the run-up to the recent General Elections and got a few responses. The general conclusion then was that voters only have the power to hold their representatives truly accountable when they stain their fingers in a polling station (or to a lesser extent in internal party elections, e.g. UNC, or leaving to form your own party, like COP). This power becomes diminished when we revert to traditional voting patterns of supporting the status quo despite their poor performance.
A recent discussion on facebook has added to this discussion, so I'm throwing it back out for response.
The Original Poster (OP) on facebook said: "I have always supported accountability and transparency in public office. My question to all who are now so rigid in this belief is: where was this strong requirement for accountability and 'holding government to their word' crusade during the last 8 years when the previous government was running this country with none of this? Did anyone attempt to make a complaint? Ask a question and got a satisfactory answer? Approach a Minister or MP for answers or demand action? Actually got in touch with a Minister or MP to ask a question or demand an action? We must all hold the [People's Partnership] very accountable for their actions and promises, but be honest and remember this is something that no other government offered in the past." {Read more}
NOTE: The T&T Elections & Boundaries Commission (EBC) did not publish detailed results by party by constituency via its website at the time I wrote this. As a result, I had to rely on unverified figures from third-party websites that claimed to have obtained them from the EBC. The 2007 results were preliminary figures released on 05 Nov 2007 and the 2010 results were preliminary figures released on 26 May 2010. These figures may differ from the final results officially published by the EBC due to recounts in progress at the time of their release. A summary spreadsheet of the data is attached in PDF.
TLAs (two- or three-letter acronyms):
{Read more}
The local media will be filled with things about this election. The winners and losers will point at each other for some of the thuggery that took place, there will be plenty of rhetoric from both sides and there will be investigations - I'm sure - into corruption charges of the last regime. How do I know all of this? My friends, we've seen all of that before. It's the soap opera of regime change.
But there have been a lot of promises made in the People's Partnership Manifesto - one of the two manifestos I have been critical of. The good news is that we now only have to worry about one. Before we worry about it, I'd like to point out that the manifesto was thrown together in less than a month and that, by itself, should lead one to understand the merit of some of those promises. I have no doubt in my mind that if either party thought they could have gotten the vote by promising free cheese sandwiches on every other Thursday, they would have promised that.
And it's that disparity of promises between the manifestos that is worth considering. The PNM promised something that 11 out of 41 seats were interested in. An interesting but hopefully silly thing to notice is that, based on this map, the closer one gets to Venezuala the more likely you voted for the PNM. Roughly 90,000 people on the North and South of the Gulf of Paria were majorities for their areas.If the People's Partnership could win everywhere else, how did they not win there? Look at the map. Isn't that odd?
What were the PNM promising in those areas that made them choose the PNM by majority? And why didn't the rest of the country buy into it? {Read more}
I started picking through the manifestos - both here and here. And when I started, I fully intended to complete a good fact check on each manifesto. To some degree, I have - and honestly, after a few days of staring at the 'contents' of each manifesto... I'm somewhat disgusted. So I stopped.
But my disgust isn't really so much about the contents as much as it is about people's reactions to the contents. This week, fortunately, we saw some dueling rhetoric between the political parties about manifestos. And that is healthy. But all of that assumes that a large number of people in the country don't read and are incapable of critical thought. And that is an insult to a lot of people that I know - and the education system of Trinidad and Tobago. Or maybe it isn't an insult. Maybe it's a description. And maybe that's why I am disgusted.
Or maybe I'm disgusted because these manifestos are the best that either political party could come up with - or would come up with. Lets be serious - at the end of the day these are politicians who aren't known for living up to their promises.
But I must compare myself to the politicians here and find myself of their ilk. I said I would do something and I didn't complete it. The good news is that no one of the readers voted for me.
That said, the PNM manifesto reads more like a CV than a manifesto, complete with exaggeration and innuendo like so many well written CVs. But at an interview, employers can weed that out. In an election, the interviewers typically don't - and the PNM counted on that. {Read more}
According to press reports, the Hon. PM - that's Prime Minister Patrick Manning - claimed he had been pondering general election dates since last year, and that he called a snap election because it was becoming difficult to govern in the current climate of dissent. In fact, the Lower House was due to debate the Opposition's motion of no confidence in the PM on 09 Apr 2010. Like the proverbial thief, at midnight on 08 Apr 2010 to be precise, he advised the President to dissolve Parliament. As if that wasn't strange enough, in an unprecedented break with tradition, he withheld the date of the general election - which by law was due within three months of Parliament's dissolution - and instead announced the election date of 24 May 2010 via press release one week later, on 16 Apr 2010.
Amidst the confusion, commentators initially pondered about the real reasons for Mr Manning's request for a new mandate two and a half years after he got his last one by 26 seats to 15. One article asked the question: did the PM move to pre-empt the debate of no confidence?
After being told recently of a rumour that Mr Manning received reliable information that the no confidence motion would have been carried on 09 Apr 2010, I wish to review his actions against two scenarios: (1) that the rumour is true, and (2) that the rumour is false.
(1) The Hon. PM called a snap election because he would've lost the no confidence debate {Read more}
Disclaimer: To be clear, I will be expressing opinions on the PNM manifesto as well. And since I am not voting in this General Election and have been irked by both sides, I am being as fair as possible.
In reading both manifestos for the General Election 2010 here in Trinidad and Tobago, I've decided to change the way that I'm going through them. The majority of both manifestos is rhetoric and promises, much of which can't be proven or disproven. That is politics - but it isn't necessarily democracy.
To be fair to the PNM, since I have already written something regarding their manifesto, I will critique the promises of the first 120 days in the The People's Party Manifesto. You can reference the manifesto here.
The promises will be in bold italic, and my comments will be in plain text below.
1. Every child going on to secondary school from the SEA will be provided with a laptop to begin their secondary school education.
A laptop does not change the fact that the teachers may not be well versed in their usage or that the curriculum will be adapted to allow for the use of laptops in the classroom. Further, it does raise questions about what the government will fund. Will they purchase systems with Microsoft software on them, assuring that students only learn about Microsoft products - or will they go with something along the lines of the OLPC, where students can learn on an open platform based on shared knowledge? {Read more}
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