Yvonne Webb

David Ab­du­lah, pres­i­dent of the Fed­er­a­tion of In­de­pen­dent Trade Unions and NGO's (Fi­tun), said last evening the rea­son the act­ing Com­mis­sion of Po­lice James Philbert gave for deny­ing them per­mis­sion to march in Port-of- Spain on Fri­day does not hold wa­ter. The CoP de­nied the or­gan­i­sa­tion's re­quest on the ba­sis of na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is­sues. "We usu­al­ly hold peace­ful and dis­ci­plined demon­stra­tions and this was one of sev­er­al demon­stra­tions we had planned for April to high­light is­sues af­fect­ing work­ers, so the rea­sons does not hold wa­ter. This is not the first time he has de­nied us per­mis­sion, any­way," Ab­du­lah said.

Fi­tun had ap­plied for re­quest to stage one of its peace­ful demon­stra­tions on the same day the Par­lia­ment was sched­uled to de­bate a no con­fi­dence mo­tion brought against Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning brought by the Op­po­si­tion UNC. The Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment had al­so ap­plied for per­mis­sion to demon­strate their sup­port for their po­lit­i­cal leader in Wood­ford Square. Philbert de­nied both re­quests. "It would have been hor­ren­dous if he (Philbert) had de­nied us and ap­proved the PNM. This would have been a clear case of dis­crim­i­na­tion," Ab­du­lah said.