Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The new Cab­i­net, led by this coun­try's first fe­male Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar will be sworn in­to of­fice to­day. The swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny will take place at the Knowsley Build­ing, Queen's Park Sa­van­nah, Port-of-Spain at 4 pm. The Knowsley Build­ing which was re­cent­ly re­fur­bished by the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion of T&T (Ude­cott) hous­es the Min­istry of For­eign Af­fairs. The is­sue of cor­rup­tion in Ude­cott, un­der its for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man Calder Hart, was on the front-burn­er dur­ing the elec­tion cam­paign. The move to the Knowsley Build­ing has bro­ken tra­di­tion since the swear­ing-in cer­e­mo­ny of the Prime Min­is­ter has been held at Pres­i­dent's House. How­ev­er, over a week ago a large sec­tion of the top floor of the west wing of the build­ing col­lapsed.

Pres­i­dent's House is used to host spe­cial func­tions such as the In­de­pen­dence Day Awards. The Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP), led by 58-year old Per­sad-Bisses­sar, won by a land­slide, cop­ping 29 of the 41 seats. She has been the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for Siparia since 1995. The PP com­pris­es the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), the Con­gress of the Peo­ple (COP), the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ), the Na­tion­al Joint Ac­tion Com­mit­tee and the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP). The swear­ing-in was made of­fi­cial af­ter pres­i­dent Max Richards re­ceived the fi­nal list of re­sults from the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion. Ear­li­er, how­ev­er, at­tor­neys rep­re­sent­ing the UNC and the PP sent a let­ter to the EBC's chair­man Dr Nor­bert Mas­son call­ing for the de­c­la­ra­tion of the re­sults to pre­vent "our client to be de­prived of hav­ing its con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly elect­ed rep­re­sen­ta­tive sworn in­to of­fice."

The let­ter which was sent by Om Lal­la stat­ed: "We are in­struct­ed that our client's po­lit­i­cal leader and Prime Min­is­ter des­ig­nate, the ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, is due to be sworn in to­day (Tues­day) as Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go up­on con­fir­ma­tion of the elec­tion re­sults by the Elec­tions and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion in ac­cor­dance with Sec­tion 104 of the Rep­re­sen­ta­tion of the Peo­ple Act Chap­ter 2:01." Mas­son could not be reached for com­ment. Ac­cord­ing to the law: "The Re­turn­ing Of­fi­cer shall, as soon as he shall have as­cer­tained the re­sult of the poll, forth­with pub­licly de­clare the same and an­nounce the can­di­date for whom the most votes have been giv­en to be elect­ed as the mem­ber for the elec­toral dis­trict."

Al­so Sec­tion 76 (1) of the Con­sti­tu­tion states it is the du­ty of the EBC, up­on de­ter­min­ing the the poll re­sults of each con­stituen­cy and up­on con­fir­ma­tion of a ma­jor­i­ty, to in­form the Pres­i­dent forth­with which shall en­able the Pres­i­dent to ap­point the Prime Min­is­ter. Al­though chief elec­tions of­fi­cer Howard Cayenne in a tele­phone in­ter­view said the pre­lim­i­nary re­sults would be re­leased to­day, they were re­leased yes­ter­day evening. He al­so said be­cause there were re­quests for re­counts in three con­stituen­cies the of­fi­cial re­sults will be made avail­able "maybe next week." The three re­quests were made for Ari­ma, Point Fortin and Diego Mar­tin North East.