WHY ROWLEY IS TIPTOEING AROUND MADURO

THE boy selling crumbled bags of vegetables told me he was eight years old and had not had a meal for the day.

He was hustling sales at the traffic lights while his mother and younger sister were vending nominal items as they shielded the midday sun against a nearby wall.

“T’ings eh nice,” the lady later told me. “The mister doing odd jobs and we does come here to see what we could do.”

All three wore tattered clothes; the children looked naive as if pleading for alms was their accepted lot in life.

Along the wall were three other families, two displaying placards requesting assistance, an indication that they were Venezuelan migrants with language limitations.

I immediately flashed on The Little Boy that Santa Claus forgot, that timeless Nat “King” Cole seasonal song.

“He’s the little boy that Santa Claus forgot,

And goodness knows he didn’t want a lot.”

I also recalled Nap Nepburn’s Tell Santa Claus, about a boy’s plea to his mother – who “had no answer to his cries” – for Christmas toys.

These street hustlers would be among what an international report called the “staggering” number of children in Trinidad and Tobago enduring poverty.

Reporting on T&T, an organisation named Borgen said poverty “negatively impacts a variety of facets in a child’s life,” such as health and access to education.    

An earlier UNICEF report told of the large number of children deprived of education, healthcare, nutrition, safety and security.

The poverty rate has been calculated at around 30 per cent – one in three – but social and charity workers theorise that there are many more struggling to put food on the table.

A representative of a large charity group told me: “More people than ever are asking us for support of any kind – food, money, clothes, shoes, anything.”

A social welfare officer said there is a greater clamour for food cards and other forms of support.

“We are only reaching a fraction of those in need,” she said, and gave graphic illustrations of grinding poverty.

Chronic deprivation is the soft underbelly of T&T, while the authorities brag about energy contracts.

And here is where there is critical relevance in Prime Minister Dr. Keith Rowley’s relentless campaign for monetisation of the rich Dragon Gas field.

Mere months before a general election, Rowley has placed all his eggs for an economic turnaround on an increasingly doubtful project with political tyrant Venezuela’s Nicholas Maduro.

He recently said he was “hopeful” because of “teamwork” and that “Venezuela is part of that team.”

This is the same land that has sinister designs on a Caricom neighbour and a quarter of whose population has fled repression and woeful hardship.

With poverty and crime blindsiding T&T, Rowley has nothing to propose to a frustrated electorate.

In addition to bragging rights, a Dragon Gas deal would allow the Prime Minister to offer hope, that political abstract that voters clutch onto.

In typical grandiose manner, he would hype better times, including a reduction in poverty levels.

He is, therefore, prepared to sleep with the devil.

That explains his soft-touch approach to Venezuela, even though Dr. Eric Williams warned in 1975 that the Latin country has imperialistic designs on T&T.

Venezuela wants to recolonise regional countries, Williams declared, and “it is a matter of survival for the Caribbean.”

Rowley has sidestepped dire warnings and the current Essequibo land grab attempt and is playing hopscotch with the despot in our backyard.

With no economic progress to report, his heart is in his hands over the Dragon Gas endeavour.

So, he continues to tiptoe around Maduro, a dictator condemned by the democratic world.