Pri­or Be­har­ry

?It is heart­less for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Hazel Man­ning to blame wide­spread flood­ing on squat­ters, while she lives ul­tra-com­fort­ably in a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar St Ann's palace with her hus­band, Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. This is the view of UNC Tabaquite MP Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj, who al­so told his con­stituents dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing on Fri­day night that Ude­cott ex­ec­u­tive chair­man, Calder Hart, could be con­sid­ered the re­al Prime Min­is­ter of T&T.

In a wide-rang­ing ad­dress, he at­tacked the Gov­ern­ment for fail­ing to con­tain crime, as wit­nessed by a 250 per cent surge in mur­der, and termed the in­ten­tion to spend $2.1 bil­lion to buy four he­li­copters as a waste of mon­ey. He al­so ques­tioned whether the Gov­ern­ment was re­al­ly man­ag­ing to curb spi­ralling food prices. With re­spect to wide­spread flood­ing in re­cent days, Ma­haraj said while homes and farms were be­ing in­un­dat­ed, the Gov­ern­ment was wax­ing lyri­cal about the rapid rail project. "How stu­pid it is for a gov­ern­ment to be talk­ing about first-world coun­try sta­tus by 2020, but it can­not even fix the drains, the rivers, the roads, the crime, or fix and main­tain the roads of our coun­try?" Ma­haraj de­clared.

He poured scorn on Man­ning's ap­par­ent dream of be­ing the coun­try's first ex­ec­u­tive pres­i­dent, fore­cast­ing that the wish would lead T&T in­to dic­ta­tor­ship. Ac­cord­ing to Ma­haraj, the news that Hart had bought a US$5 mil­lion lux­u­ry con­do­mini­um brought re­al­i­ty home to him. "I say tonight that Patrick Man­ning is not the re­al Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go. The re­al Prime Min­is­ter is Calder Hart..." The Gov­ern­ment had a du­ty to pro­vide land and homes for its cit­i­zens, so it was "heart­less" for Mrs Man­ning to con­demn squat­ters for caus­ing flood­ing when she lived in a palace paid for with tax­pay­ers' dol­lars.

Ma­haraj said Man­ning and his co­horts must be stopped, but first the tu­mult with­in the UNC with the Ram­jack fac­tion, led by Ch­agua­nas West MP Jack Warn­er and him­self against Op­po­si­tion Leader Bas­deo Pan­day, had to be set­tled. With a rein­vig­o­rat­ed UNC back in gov­ern­ment, crime would be brought un­der stern con­trol, the for­mer At­tor­ney Gen­er­al promised. And un­like the PNM plan for lo­cal gov­ern­ment, the mu­nic­i­pal au­thor­i­ties, in­stead of be­ing emas­cu­lat­ed, would be giv­en more au­ton­o­my.

(PB)