Gail Alexan­der

PNM MPs have tak­en a turn af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's cred­i­bil­i­ty re­gard­ing the NP con­tract is­sue and the Tu­na­puna house where Per­sad-Bisses­sar stayed be­fore and af­ter last year's elec­tion. PNM's Pat McIn­tosh and Amery Browne, as well as tem­po­rary sen­a­tor Mar­i­ano Browne, al­so spoke about the is­sue at Pig­gott's Cor­ner in Bel­mont on Wednes­day. MP Browne said the Prime Min­is­ter's cred­i­bil­i­ty has been tak­ing a beat­ing and sink­ing low­er on var­i­ous is­sues from the Resh­mi Ram­nar­ine/SIA mat­ter to the farm­ers' evic­tion and the Mary King mat­ter.

He said the NP/house is­sue was the lat­est. Browne said there were too many ex­cus­es and cov­er-ups from the Prime Min­is­ter and Gov­ern­ment. "When one has to read an ex­pla­na­tion to the me­dia from a piece of pa­per (on Tues­day), it's not cred­i­ble," he said. McIn­tosh said the PP Gov­ern­ment was tak­ing the pop­u­la­tion for "fool­ish peo­ple..." "And we are not fool­ish!" she added.McIn­tosh said there had been a "lot of de­cep­tion" on the Gov­ern­ment's part. She asked how the pop­u­la­tion was to be­lieve that a bid­der for the $40 mil­lion NP con­tract might not be the pre­ferred bid­der af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter had stayed in the per­son's house for a length of three months.

"And you want us to be­lieve you don't know any­thing about it?!...you must have known about it," McIn­tosh added, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment could not "push any­thing down the pub­lic's throat." Sen­a­tor Browne said the pub­lic was judg­ing the Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance on "mis­steps," "mis­takes," "mis­in­for­ma­tion," "mishaps" and oth­er faux pas. He said the Gov­ern­ment had a lot of ex­plain­ing to do es­pe­cial­ly on the NP/Tu­na­puna house is­sue. "Be­cause the is­sues don't add up at all," he added.

Browne said con­cerns on the is­sue were mount­ing since the Prime Min­is­ter had ad­mit­ted to a re­la­tion­ship of "friend" sta­tus with the own­er of a Tu­na­puna house where she stayed for free and whose com­pa­ny was re­port­ed to be bid­ding for the NP con­tract. "Tell us ex­act­ly what is the po­si­tion," Browne called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Mar­i­ano Browne and McIn­tosh al­so took the NP/house is­sue to the pub­lic at a "Town Hall" meet­ing at Bel­mont Ju­nior Sec­ondary school last night where mem­bers of the pub­lic com­ment­ed on this and oth­er as­pects of the Gov­ern­ment's per­for­mance.