Cori Baynes

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has no in­ten­tion of en­ter­ing in­to any de­bate with Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­fore the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tion. Man­ning made the an­nounce­ment yes­ter­day, while speak­ing with mem­bers of the me­dia, short­ly af­ter he com­plet­ed a walk­a­bout in Tar­o­dale Heights, which is lo­cat­ed in his San Fer­nan­do East con­stituen­cy. He was re­spond­ing to the Trinidad and To­ba­go Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce's launch­ing of the T&T De­bates Com­mis­sion at its West­moor­ings of­fice yes­ter­day. The com­mis­sion is­sued an in­vi­ta­tion to both Man­ning and Per­sad-Bisses­sar to have a de­bate on lead­er­ship is­sues on May 18–six days be­fore the gen­er­al elec­tion. (See sto­ry be­low)

The De­bate Com­mis­sion's pur­pose is to strength­en the lo­cal de­mo­c­ra­t­ic process by stag­ing de­bates on mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance.

Ac­cord­ing to cham­ber pres­i­dent An­gel­la Per­sad, the com­mis­sion's pri­ma­ry ob­jec­tive is to en­able the cit­i­zens of T&T to learn di­rect­ly from the lead­er­ship of the par­ties what are their vi­sions and plans for the coun­try in the years ahead. Man­ning, how­ev­er, said he would have noth­ing to gain by a de­bate with his op­po­nent. "It is un­like­ly that I will par­tic­i­pate in any such de­bate, very un­like­ly," he said. "You all need to check and see what the im­pli­ca­tions of these de­bates are. Our po­lit­i­cal judg­ment is that we may do it, but not now." He said his par­ty pre­ferred to walk the con­stituen­cies and meet the res­i­dents. "The PNM, in­stead of do­ing these de­bates, prefers to do as we are do­ing and walk around as we are walk­ing around now," he said.

"It has noth­ing to do with the an­swers you give or any such thing. What do I have to gain by do­ing a de­bate with Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar? Noth­ing to gain by that." About an hour ear­li­er, around 4.45 pm, Man­ning, ac­com­pa­nied by par­ty faith­ful, met with and heard the com­plaints and con­cerns of the Tar­o­dale res­i­dents. As the loud­speak­er blared PNM cam­paign slo­gans, Man­ning start­ed his walk at Sion Dri­ve Ex­ten­sion, and made his way along Yal­lahs, Spring Hill and Green Hill av­enues, Green Hill Ex­ten­sion and Grange Dri­ve. Man­ning ac­knowl­edged that many of the con­cerns dealt with var­i­ous hous­ing is­sues which, he said, were due to fast con­struc­tion and su­per­vi­sion that were "not of the best." He said the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion would re­vis­it the area and as­sess the var­i­ous prob­lems.