JavaScript is disabled in your web browser or browser is too old to support JavaScript. Today almost all web pages contain JavaScript, a scripting programming language that runs on visitor's web browser. It makes web pages functional for specific purposes and if disabled for some reason, the content or the functionality of the web page can be limited or unavailable.

Monday, February 24, 2025

Chamber calls on Manning: Announce election date now

by

20100414

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has evad­ed any ques­tions posed to him about the elec­tion, say­ing "no com­ment at this time. I spoke to you every day of the week so far." Jour­nal­ists at­tempt­ed to speak with Man­ning about de­vel­op­ments in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, short­ly af­ter he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce's an­nu­al meet­ing and lun­cheon at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

"No com­ment at this time....I spoke to you every day of the week so far," said Man­ning to a group of re­porters, as he hur­ried­ly walked out of the Port-of-Spain room at the Hy­att. Be­fore Man­ning de­liv­ered his ad­dress, An­gel­la Per­sad, pres­i­dent of the cham­ber, in her re­marks, made a call for the gen­er­al elec­tion to be held im­me­di­ate­ly. "Prime Min­is­ter, we ask that you re­veal the elec­tion date as ear­ly as pos­si­ble so we can set­tle back to work," Per­sad said. Per­sad said she hoped the elec­tion pe­ri­od would be used as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­tro­spec­tion.

"We hope, too, that this elec­tion cam­paign would be used as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-eval­u­ate our po­si­tion and re-es­tab­lish our path to 2020," she said. Per­sad said T&T was be­ing re­de­fined po­lit­i­cal­ly, as "we have just wit­nessed the chang­ing of the guards at the Op­po­si­tion par­ty and their very own loy­al­ists who sought change. "The voice of the peo­ple has nev­er been so strong and so out­spo­ken and the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter has re­spond­ed by dis­solv­ing Par­lia­ment in prepa­ra­tion for a gen­er­al elec­tion...Cer­tain­ly, our democ­ra­cy is well at work," she said.

Per­sad said the cor­po­rate ethics of our coun­try had been test­ed "in a way nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore and the pub­lic voice is now al­most re­lent­less in its pur­suit of an­swers and calls to ac­count. "When our role mod­els and pub­lic gov­er­nance sys­tems fail us, they leave a deep­er wound than any fi­nan­cial cri­sis," she said. "We need to re­turn to the ba­sic prin­ci­ples of right and wrong, where wrong­do­ing car­ries swift de­ter­mi­na­tion and penal­ties, so there is no ques­tion about our val­ues."


Related articles

Sponsored

Weather

PORT OF SPAIN WEATHER

Sponsored