By CECILY ASSON Tuesday, May 17 2011

POLITICAL leader of the National Joint Action Committee (NJAC), Ambassador Makandal Daaga, has expressed concern over the level of corruption that continues to play out itself in the country.

Speaking on Saturday at the founding congress of the Movement of Social Justice (MSJ) at Palms Club San Fernando, Dagga called on the government to “open our jail doors, and just pack them in.”

To loud cheers from MSJ supporters in the hall, Dagga declared, “In my whole 40, or 50, or 60 years, I have never heard so much corruption in my land as I have heard in this country over the last few days. I can’t understand why we cannot open our jail doors and pack them in,”

He said the corruption continued in TT because the country never dealt with it as they should . “ People are stealing money as if they have invented it; as if it is their right to thief. I tell my party over and over again what we are experiencing today here, is because of our failure to act when we should have acted to prevent this country from becoming the state it is today,” he said.

Dagga added that when a few years ago a PNM minister declared they ‘thief” he made it clear that he was not among such persons. “I said not me,” he said.

Dagga warned Labour Minister Errol Mc leod who was elected on Saturday as leader of the MSJ that “it is going to be very, very difficult, not because you do not have the strength and character to do, but because of the present condition of this country.”

Dagga said his association with MSJ, and his comments made, does ‘not mean to say that I am against my party.’

He want on to say, “I was born in struggle , I grew up in struggle and it looks as if I am going to die in struggle. And this is why I identified with you in this party, and with all the members of the working class, in their struggle as they move forward from one point to another.