Gail Alexan­der

?The very brief meet­ing Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning had with Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day be­hind the House Speak­er's chair dur­ing yes­ter­day's House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives ses­sion in­volved a hand­shake.

But when the minute-plus meet­ing was con­clud­ed at 1.51 pm, nei­ther bore any sign that it had been a fol­low-up to a sim­i­lar in­ter­lude the two lead­ers had two weeks ago (at the same lo­ca­tion) when they dis­cussed a meet­ing pro­posed by Man­ning. That even­tu­al No­vem­ber 3 cau­cus, on con­sti­tu­tion­al re­form and pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, took place at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre. What­ev­er the sub­ject of yes­ter­day's tete-a-tete, Pan­day did not spare Man­ning's ad­min­is­tra­tion when he spoke sub­se­quent­ly on the Ev­i­dence Amend­ment Bill. Pan­day had ar­rived quite ear­ly for yes­ter­day's de­bate–pos­si­bly be­cause he had to speak–but PNM MP Kei­th Row­ley did so even ear­li­er. If he was look­ing for­ward to it, Row­ley how­ev­er did not en­joy a re­sponse from Gov­ern­ment yes­ter­day on his ques­tion seek­ing de­tails of the re­mu­ner­a­tion pack­ages Ude­cott head Calder Hart re­ceives as head of five state agen­cies. The an­swer, if sup­plied yes­ter­day, might have tak­en the shine off of Mon­day's open­ing of the Na­tion­al Acad­e­my for the Per­form­ing Arts where Hart was lav­ish­ly praised by Man­ning. But Gov­ern­ment an­swered none of the ques­tions on yes­ter­day's agen­da. And in sub­se­quent pro­ceed­ings, the ad­min­is­tra­tion in­stead con­tin­ued on some­thing of a roll from Mon­day's Ude­cott high, claim­ing le­gal vic­to­ry in an NHIC mat­ter–an­oth­er en­ti­ty among is­sues be­tween Row­ley and Man­ning.

Crime shad­ows bloom­ing tourism sec­tor

If Gov­ern­ment is bank­ing on mak­ing T&T the cul­tur­al cen­tre of the Caribbean–on the ba­sis that the new Per­form­ing Arts Acad­e­my has the largest stage in the re­gion–its head start has al­ready come via tourism. On Wednes­day, the World Trav­el and Tourism Coun­cil re­leased a re­port that tourism is be­com­ing in­creas­ing­ly im­por­tant to T&T, com­pris­ing 0.6 per cent of GDP–$14.4m worth–in 2009. It al­so con­tributed to 14.7 per cent of em­ploy­ment with 88,000 jobs.

Re­search by WTTC and Ox­ford Eco­nom­ics re­vealed that con­tri­bu­tion by the trav­el/tourism sec­tor to T&T's GDP is ex­pect­ed to rise to 12.7 per cent or $32.8m worth by 2010, cre­at­ing 124,000 jobs (one in 5.7 jobs) and 17 per cent of em­ploy­ment. How­ev­er, key to the sus­tain­abil­i­ty of that lu­cra­tive sec­tor is se­cu­ri­ty, a par­tic­u­lar­ly sharp thorn in the PNM Gov­ern­ment's pos­te­ri­or and a tough line the ad­min­is­tra­tion has to walk in cur­rent re­ces­sion­ary times. This week's new lows: the killing and wound­ing of prison of­fi­cers in sep­a­rate in­ci­dents, mur­der at a pub­lic health cen­tre, a fe­male trainee cop con­vict­ed for theft from a fel­low trainee, and pedi­gree dog-nap­pers.

Un­for­tu­nate­ly for Gov­ern­ment, its (lat­est) pride and joy, the new acad­e­my, sits smack in the mid­dle of a crime hot-spot, Port-of-Spain north, where bur­geon­ing busi­ness plus ho­tels and guest hous­es are lo­cat­ed and which have had to fend off equal­ly strong crime growth. Hote­liers around Wood­brook ar­eas re­cent­ly ap­pealed for greater po­lice vis­i­bil­i­ty to re­vive flag­ging vis­i­tor con­fi­dence and num­bers. PNM Coun­cil­lor Janet Wal­lace-Hen­ry, whose area cov­ers from Park Street to the Sa­van­nah and parts of Bel­mont/Wood­brook, is con­cerned about the se­cu­ri­ty sit­u­a­tion, par­tic­u­lar­ly per­tain­ing to acad­e­my pa­trons. Wal­lace-Hen­ry, who at­tend­ed Mon­day's open­ing–and will at­tend to­day's first acad­e­my per­for­mance–said yes­ter­day: "They must beef up foot pa­trols in these ar­eas and the acad­e­my es­pe­cial­ly from 6 pm. Peo­ple will have to walk from their cars parked in the Sa­van­nah to get to shows at the acad­e­my as there's no ad­e­quate park­ing there. "I'm un­hap­py with the num­ber of foot pa­trols in Wood­brook at night. Car­ni­val is ahead and peo­ple need to feel con­fi­dent since many walk to the Sa­van­nah for shows, and of course peo­ple will want to see our new acad­e­my. They must there­fore feel se­cure in ac­cess­ing it."

COP/UNC meet­ing still open–May­ers

Show­ing no signs of in­se­cu­ri­ty yes­ter­day was UNC deputy Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar fol­low­ing this week's Op­po­si­tion de­vel­op­ments. Per­sad-Bisses­sar did not at­tend UNC's ex­ec­u­tive meet­ing on Thurs­day fol­low­ing her de­ci­sion to blank to­day's COP ral­ly. The lat­ter oc­curred si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly with Pan­day's rev­e­la­tion that she had not con­sult­ed UNC's ex­ec­u­tive about her ral­ly ap­pear­ance. Dur­ing yes­ter­day's sit­ting there was no ex­ter­nal sign of that in­ter­nal is­sue as Per­sad-Bisses­sar and Pan­day chat­ted and watched At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie pi­lot the Ev­i­dence Bill. Per­sad-Bisses­sar's move to blank the COP ral­ly con­firmed her faith­ful toe­ing of the UNC par­ty line de­spite her re­cent–in­de­pen­dent–joint plat­forms with her COP coun­ter­part Prakash Ra­mad­har. While she had stressed that those were "per­son­al" en­deav­ours, she had al­so made it clear uni­ty was the way to go. Whether or not chas­tened by Pan­day's rev­e­la­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Thurs­day that any oth­er COP joint plat­forms will be "in terms of a pol­i­cy di­rec­tive of the par­ty." UNC of­fi­cials con­firmed that Pan­day, at Thurs­day's ex­ec­u­tive, again spoke about par­ty dis­ci­pline and–apart from spar­ring with Ram­jack mem­bers–again not­ed that Per­sad-Bisses­sar had not in­formed the ex­ec­u­tive of the ral­ly in­vi­ta­tion.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ap­pear­ance would have put her on the same plat­form not on­ly with COP and oth­er par­ties, but al­so es­tranged UNC MP Win­ston Pe­ters, giv­ing COP claim to the first unit­ed front in re­cent times. How­ev­er that "uni­ty" fa­cade lies scut­tled as Per­sad-Bisses­sar has con­formed to the Pan­day prin­ci­ple. Al­though COP leader Win­ston Dook­er­an said Per­sad-Bisses­sar's ap­pear­ance would have been an op­por­tu­ni­ty "to get on is­sues," he's had no such lament for Tues­day's still­born COP/UNC uni­ty meet­ing. COP deputy Robert May­ers said COP re­mains ready to meet UNC "any­time they wish again." May­ers had his own the­o­ry about Per­sad-Bisses­sar's non-ap­pear­ance: "The re­cent call at UNC's con­gress for Pan­day to step aside and for her to lead, puts her in a pe­cu­liar place if she were seen to be do­ing any­thing the leader doesn't want. It may fan more in­ter­nal flames UNC can ill af­ford fur­ther." The Ram­Jack fac­tion–among those "flames"–has now post­poned its pro­posed No­vem­ber 29 as­sem­bly to con­cen­trate on con­test­ing UNC's Jan­u­ary 2010 in­ter­nal elec­tion. The group hopes to win enough key posts to hold their gath­er­ing, post-elec­tion, in con­trol of UNC's Rien­zi head of­fice, a spokesman for Jack Warn­er con­firmed.