“Wayne Kublalsingh will die and I will attend his funeral.” These were the words of former Port-of-Spain mayor Louis Lee Sing yesterday, as he spoke to the media after visiting environmentalist Dr Wayne Kublalsingh on day seven of his second hunger strike outside of the Office of the Prime Minister in St Clair.
Lee Sing’s prediction came even as the Highway Re-route Movement plans to reveal an alternative route for the Debe to Mon Desir leg of the Point Fortin Highway today, and masman Peter Minshall yesterday added his voice to the call. Lee Sing, like Kublalsingh, was dressed completely in black yesterday. He had just come from attending a second funeral this week. “He is going to die here. I will come to his funeral; remember, I told you that,” Lee Sing said.
“Left to (Prime Minister) Kamla Persad-Bissessar, Wayne Kublalsingh is going to die here and I will come to his funeral and nobody is going to do anything thereafter. This (the highway) will then die with Kublalsingh.” He said the population had shown a level of indifference on the current issue, adding Section 34, which he considered a “dose of arsenic” on this country’s laws, had already been forgotten.
“Wayne is on a slippery slope and he is sliding on that slope and the nation is on top of him, bringing him down,” he said. Lee Sing said he had told Kublalsingh not to start the second hunger strike as the Government did not care an iota whether he lived or died. Despite his doubt that Kublalsingh would receive a response from the Prime Minister, Lee Sing still commended him for putting his country before his life.
“This is not a Government that you can find anything decent, noble or honest to attribute to it,” he said, adding that he felt under the People’s National Movement administration Kublalsingh would at least have received a hearing. Kublalsingh, who wrote to acting Prime Minister Errol Mcleod on Monday and Foreign Affairs Minister Winston Dookeran yesterday seeking assistance to help facilitate a meeting with Persad-Bissessar, said he did not feel his body could last much longer.
The activist said he would have seen a doctor for the first time yesterday since he began this hunger strike. The Highway Re-Route Movement (HRM) will head to South Trinidad today with a new proposal for the highway to be re-routed, Kublalsingh said. He said the HRM had made a new proposal which took the work Government had already begun into consideration and revised its initial proposal to include work already completed.
“I think this new proposal is a beautiful solution, I think it would add connectivity. I think it is a win-win solution and if the Prime Minister and Government are sincere then they will take it seriously,” Kublalsingh said. “They have already broken down houses. I think this new solution, which dovetails with that, would be good for the people.”
When asked about the various predictions that he would die as a result of his latest hunger strike, he said, “I embarked on the mission of the hunger strike not to die but to live. “I am not going to die here, I am going to live but if it comes to death I will not mind facing it. I have no qualms about dying. Dying is very easy for me. I am at peace, I am very calm.” He said in the event of his death, the fight would continue.
“I have spoken to David Abdulah and I feel he understands what is happening and he would be very capable of leading the group.”
Minshall wants change of heart
Celebrated masman Peter Minshall yesterday spoke out on the issue of the highway, saying that a re-route of the Debe to Mon Desir section made sense. In a letter yesterday, Minshall said, “The problem is that the re-routing of the highway makes no money for the 'friends and family' of the Government.”
Minshall, who visited the OPM last week with two other concerned citizens to call for a revisit of the Armstrong report, said only a very small portion of the highway was in contention for the re-routing, from Debe to Mon Desir, “nine miles at most.” “The Highway Re-route Movement does not demand, nor has ever demanded the complete abandonment of a highway, and has indeed called for an overall improvement of the entire roadway system of the southland.”
He described the route chosen by Government as “ill-advised, absurd madness,” as it entailed the destruction of a mountain, “which is then to be carted cross-country to be dumped in a lagoon, thereupon to build a road.” “The Government simply cannot afford to come to the table. The deck is forbiddingly stacked against its position. Scientific expertise over-rules it. Principles of efficiency and wise spending rule it out.
“The government's case for its highway clearly makes no sense. Shockingly, the government's point of view seems to be that 'making money' for personal gain trumps 'making sense' for public benefit.” He called the current Debe to Mon Desir section of the highway “an extravagant nonsense.”
