CITIZENS who criticise the government do not support the government. So the government could not be bothered with those criticisms.

This was the logic to be applied to the incredible declaration by Energy Minister Conrad Enill, as he spoke in his customary dead-calm, during an interview broadcast on Win TV one night a couple weeks ago. The interviewer, a young female presenter, had just completed a commendable segment in which she had gone on location at a dairy farm and spoken with the farmer, the cameras capturing the milking process and the feeding arrangements in operation.

The farmer was responding to questions about the state of the local dairy industry, why most of his colleagues and, probably, competitors, were selling out, and getting out of that line of business. There was no profit in it. He talked again about the familiar lament concerning local farmers and the multinational company, Nestle, about how unfair that arrangement is, and about how he had sought to corner a portion of the market by selling his milk to locals, for religious and other purposes.

Changing frames and topics, she was next in the studio with the minister, in a discussion in which he was explaining some aspects of the government’s current industrial strategy.

He referred to the widely criticised policy of continuing heavy dependence on energy-based development.

So the government decides to concentrate in this area, he said. And people criticise them for it. But those who criticise the government don’t vote for us, he said. It was a jaw-dropper on so many fronts. Not the least of these is the fact that the minister is dead wrong.

Even if the minister were right, however, this comment speaks to a kind of arrogance that opens a huge window on why the cries of so many citizens keep falling on deaf ears. Government, by this method, means listening only to those deemed to be supporters of the party in power, or more particularly of the government.

In any number of villages and towns across the country there are people whose votes it is easy to trace to the party of which this minister now has the privilege to be chairman. Many thousands of those people have been lifelong supporters of the party, an allegiance which they would defend at tremendous cost. At the same time, however, there are all those number of instances in which those supporters by the thousands could fill entire television programmes with their tales of having to live without proper supplies of pipe-borne water. Stories of bad roads, of clogged drains, of poor public transport and sanitation services, poor and unreliable electricity service...the list is long.

They would be entitled to take offence at the minister’s remarks. They ought to be furious.

But more than that. The ruling party has sought to build a name on its claim to being the country’s only truly national political party. As one small symbolic commitment to that ideal, the party fields candidates in all of the constituencies contested in national elections. Such a comment from the chairman, therefore, does naked violence its obligation to be the government of all the people.

From a list of electors totalling just under one million people, 299,813 of them voted for Mr Enill’s party in the 2007 general election. Some 194,425 of them voted for the party that is now the parliamentary opposition. Another 148,041 electors cast ballots for a party that failed to win a seat in that parliament. It means that of those electors who voted, 342,466 of them went against the party now in government. With a voter turnout put at about 66 per cent, this means another 300,000 people refused to cast a ballot.

Taking these numbers into account, Minister Enill has a case to answer against anyone who concludes that his comments mean the disenfranchisement of a majority of those who did vote, and all of those who did not.

But here is another clincher. The latest results released from the government’s own continuous opinion polling process have said that 74 per cent of respondents answered NO when asked whether they were satisfied with the way the government was running the country. Those who answered YES amounted to 18 per cent. The poll containing this question was taken in late March and early April this year. The polling organisation said its method was adjusted for the numbers to reflect a national average.

It means that at the moment, the government of Trinidad and Tobago does not enjoy the support of more than a quarter of the population.

This is a reality that should worry the hell out of Minister Enill and his colleagues. A correct reading of those responses should tell him that some proportion of those respondents would be people who voted for his party 22 months ago.