Richard Lord

Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and his Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) were de­nied per­mis­sion yes­ter­day by Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs to hold a post-bud­get pub­lic meet­ing at Pig­gott's Cor­ner, Bel­mont, on Fri­day evening. Short­ly af­ter the let­ter was re­ceived at Bal­isi­er House a new let­ter was dis­patched seek­ing per­mis­sion to hold the meet­ing, PNM gen­er­al sec­re­tary Ash­ton Ford said. A copy of Gibbs' let­ter to Ford, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 11, stat­ed: "As a re­sult of the state of emer­gency cur­rent­ly en­forced and in ac­cor­dance with Reg­u­la­tion 7 (1) of the Emer­gency Pow­ers Reg­u­la­tions, 2011, I am un­able to ac­cede to your re­quest to hold a pub­lic march on Oc­to­ber 14, 2011."

The PNM, in its let­ter to Gibbs, dat­ed Oc­to­ber 7, 2011, re­quest­ed per­mis­sion to hold a pub­lic meet­ing be­tween 6 pm and 9 pm on Oc­to­ber 14. "We are re­quest­ing your per­mis­sion to use a pub­lic ad­dress sys­tem on the night of the meet­ing," the let­ter added. A sec­ond let­ter from the PNM to Gibbs was dis­patched yes­ter­day seek­ing per­mis­sion for the pub­lic meet­ing on Fri­day. Gov­ern­ment de­clared a state of emer­gency in T&T in Au­gust 21 and it is ex­pect­ed to con­tin­ue un­til ear­ly De­cem­ber. An 11 pm to 4 am cur­few is al­so in ef­fect in se­lect­ed com­mu­ni­ties in T&T, in­clud­ing Bel­mont. Un­der a state of emer­gency pub­lic po­lit­i­cal meet­ings are not usu­al­ly al­lowed.

Ford said he re­ceived the po­lice re­jec­tion of the par­ty's ap­pli­ca­tion yes­ter­day. He in­sist­ed the PNM did not ap­ply for any march but to hold a meet­ing with cit­i­zens to dis­cuss the na­tion­al bud­get. He said: "We are no threat to na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty. We find it strange that we would be de­nied per­mis­sion to hold a pub­lic meet­ing to dis­cuss the bud­get." Ford said the com­mis­sion­er ini­tial­ly said the PNM nev­er ap­plied for per­mis­sion. "We find it very strange and we knew that some­thing was cook­ing," Ford added.

Row­ley said last week the PNM in­tend­ed to ap­ply for per­mis­sion to hold the pub­lic meet­ing af­ter his bud­get re­sponse on Fri­day. He said he no­ticed one of the mem­ber units of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment was able to stage a pub­lic march on the is­land re­cent­ly while the trade unions were not al­lowed to do so.