Chester Sam­bra­no

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has de­scribed as hypocrisy the gov­ern­ment’s plan to host the 2020 Caribbean Pre­mier League (CPL) crick­et com­pe­ti­tion, while she says it is not al­low­ing many cit­i­zens to re­turn home due to COVID-19 re­stric­tions.

Yes­ter­day Sports Min­is­ter Sham­fa Cud­joe an­nounced the deal which will be car­ried out un­der strict ad­her­ence to the COVID-19 guide­lines.

How­ev­er, speak­ing at a UNC (Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress) vir­tu­al meet­ing last night, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said oth­ers are be­ing giv­en prece­dent over na­tion­als.

“I talk about the hypocrisy, you open the bor­ders for Del­cy (Ro­driguez) and com­pa­ny to come here to make some kind of deal but you will not open the bor­ders for our na­tion­als to come home and then what are you go­ing to do now? You sign up for CPL crick­et, so for­eign­ers are go­ing to come in but Trinidad and To­ba­go na­tion­al who have the right...”

She said the gov­ern­ment is choos­ing to put sys­tems in place for CPL in­stead of al­low­ing na­tion­als to come home dur­ing this time of elec­tions.

The tour­na­ment will be played from Au­gust 18 to Sep­tem­ber 12, 2020, but Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I am told by peo­ple in sports like Anil and so on that, they will have to come in long be­fore that, at least one month be­fore.”

She ex­plained that this has to be done to bring in the rel­e­vant equip­ment as well as to set up for the prop­er run­ning of the com­pe­ti­tion.

The Op­po­si­tion Leader lament­ed that while this will be tak­ing place the gov­ern­ment is “de­priv­ing cit­i­zens of the right to vote,” in the Au­gust 10 polls.

She said it is with that in mind the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young must an­swer what she called “se­ri­ous ques­tions.”

“I call on the gov­ern­ment to tell me how many na­tion­als are out of Trinidad and To­ba­go, how many? How many will not be al­lowed to come home to vote? How many are you al­low­ing to come in qui­et­ly and se­cret­ly giv­ing ex­emp­tions to, how many?”

The Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion has said that there are no sys­tems in place for peo­ple who are out of the coun­try to vote.

She al­so said if in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers are to come in for this coun­try’s elec­tion they have to come now in or­der to un­der­go the quar­an­tine process.