Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter says not one but two na­tion­al elec­tions are com­ing this year.

Ad­dress­ing a large crowd of Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment sup­port­ers at the Hi-Lo car park, St Au­gus­tine, on Mon­day night, Man­ning said both the gen­er­al (par­lia­men­tary) elec­tion and the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions were com­ing.

He said the date for the par­lia­men­tary elec­tion would be an­nounced "very short­ly" and if the PNM was re­turned to pow­er, it would seek to hold the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions, which have been post­poned for four con­sec­u­tive years. Man­ning said the lo­cal gov­ern­ment sys­tem had failed and there was need for a new sys­tem of lo­cal gov­ern­ment in Trinidad. He said the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Bill would be among the first pieces of leg­is­la­tion to be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment if the PNM won the elec­tion. Man­ning said he was the most vil­i­fied Prime Min­is­ter T&T had ever seen. He said there was a sus­tained at­tack, but, he added, he was not afraid of any­one. He dis­missed claims from the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress that the Par­lia­ment was dis­solved hours be­fore the sched­uled de­bate on a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in him that was to be brought by Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. He said: "There is noth­ing about them of which we are afraid, noth­ing. We stop them dead in their tracks be­cause you know what they had planned to do."

He ex­plained: "They had planned to come in the Par­lia­ment and lie and slan­der un­der the cloak of par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege. Well any­thing you could say in­side (Par­lia­ment) you could say out­side too. Let them come in St Au­gus­tine here and say it. Let them go in Wood­ford Square and say it." Man­ning said his lawyers were ready to deal with any con­se­quence of the pub­lic state­ments of the Op­po­si­tion Leader in that re­gard. Dur­ing the meet­ing Man­ning was of­fered a bot­tle of wa­ter. Af­ter ac­cept­ing it he said at a UNC meet­ing they would have of­fered the speak­er a Guin­ness and pun­cheon (al­co­holic drinks). The crowd burst in­to laugh­ter. Ear­li­er Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning asked re­peat­ed­ly dur­ing her ad­dress at the meet­ing:" We are ready. Are you ready?" She ad­vised the crowd there was no need to be fear­ful or doubt the de­ci­sion to go to the polls af­ter on­ly 29 months in of­fice. Man­ning said the de­trac­tors have been ma­nip­u­lat­ing the in­for­ma­tion space to dis­cred­it the PNM Gov­ern­ment.

She said the polls were to get a fresh man­date from the pop­u­la­tion to pro­ceed with PNM plans to de­vel­op T&T ac­cord­ing to its Vi­sion 2020 ini­tia­tive. She de­scribed the Prime Min­is­ter, who is al­so her hus­band as "a leader who has the coun­try stamped on his heart." Sci­ence, Tech­nol­o­gy and Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion Min­is­ter and MP for Pointe-a-Pierre Chris­tine Kan­ga­loo said the coun­try was be­ing asked to vote for progress or re­gres­sion. "Choose it or lose it," she added. She said US Pres­i­dent Barak Oba­ma was "bussing his head try­ing to find ways to make ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion there af­ford­able... And it is so sim­ple, you know, for Pres­i­dent Oba­ma to solve the prob­lems of Amer­i­ca–all he has to do is join the PNM."