Gail Alexan­der

Mem­bers of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment be­gan con­duct­ing par­ty busi­ness at the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fi­cial res­i­dence at St Ann's yes­ter­day with a cau­cus on Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion plan­ning. Gov­ern­ment's press sec­re­tary Garvin Nicholas con­firmed the meet­ings yes­ter­day dur­ing a me­dia tour of the res­i­dence. Nicholas said meet­ings were sched­uled to take place yes­ter­day evening be­tween the UNC and COP main­ly on is­sues re­gard­ing Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tions and fi­nal­i­sa­tion of how the Part­ner­ship will con­test these polls. An­oth­er meet­ing is ex­pect­ed to­day, he added.

Nicholas said al­so the of­fi­cial res­i­dence is "way too large" for its pur­pos­es and there are "a lot of things" at the build­ing that should not be there. Nicholas, who said the me­dia had re­quest­ed the tour, added: "There are a lot of things that should not be here, you'd see when you go... you'll see with the res­i­dence, es­pe­cial­ly. In our view the res­i­dence is way too large for its pur­pos­es and we've heard about the ex­trav­a­gance in terms of the cur­tains." "Is it re­al­ly nec­es­sary to have spent all of this mon­ey to ac­com­mo­date a Prime Min­is­ter when there were so many oth­er things you could have spent the mon­ey on?" Asked if the build­ing was worth the mon­ey, Nicholas said," I have seen struc­tures in oth­er coun­tries that cost less, the roof of Par­lia­ment could have been fixed roof or ren­o­va­tions could have been done to the Par­lia­ment. But you'll see for your­self, I'm let­ting you all see so you could tell the pop­u­la­tion.

Nicholas said some of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's be­long­ings will be moved in­to the lo­ca­tion start­ing this week­end while she is over­seas at the Cari­com sum­mit. Nicholas said the res­i­dence was not Per­sad-Bisses­sar's first choice to live in. He said she of­fered it to the Pres­i­dent first and he turned it down. "As a re­sult she has de­cid­ed to move in," Nicholas added. Nicholas said it has not been de­cid­ed whether cur­rent staff–said to be main­ly for­eign­ers–will be re­tained.

He said arrange­ments for per­son­nel/com­pa­nies main­tain­ing the struc­ture will be worked out al­so.

While the of­fi­cial res­i­dence sec­tion of the build­ing has a chapel with stained-glass win­dows, Nicholas said that a place for Hin­du wor­ship was not con­tem­plat­ed at this time. The tour in­clud­ed the diplo­mat­ic cen­tre and of­fi­cial PM's res­i­dence, but did not in­clude the pri­vate liv­ing quar­ters of the res­i­dence. Me­dia work­ers were shown the cen­tre's Cab­i­net con­fer­ence room, the me­dia brief­ing area, ad­min­is­tra­tive of­fices and the Prime Min­is­ter's of­fice–all high tech state-of-the art-equipped ar­eas. At var­i­ous points of the cen­tre were gifts and sou­venirs giv­en to the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion from en­er­gy and oth­er busi­ness cor­po­ra­tions in­clud­ing a four-foot-high steel stat­ue of a cow­boy, horse and dog.

Pic­tures of for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning dur­ing the Sum­mit of the Amer­i­c­as, the char­ter agree­ment signed at the sum­mit and a pic­ture of Man­ning and oth­er guests dec­o­rat­ed oth­er points of the cen­tre. The me­dia al­so toured the ten guest-rooms of the res­i­dence which al­so in­clud­ed a jacuzzi and sauna and bar­ber sa­lon with mas­sage ta­ble. The res­i­dence al­so in­cludes a state-of-the-art gym with Cy­bex and Arc­Train­er equip­ment, a gam­ing room and bar, din­ing room and sit­ting rooms.

Re­porters were not shown the drapes which re­port­ed­ly cost $3 mil­lion. Nicholas said these were done by a lo­cal de­sign­er. Foun­tains on the grounds which were turned off dur­ing the long dry sea­son were back on and spout­ing tall yes­ter­day. Nicholas said a con­cert was held at the ad­join­ing En­ter­tain­ment Cen­tre last Sat­ur­day for sev­er­al hun­dred chil­dren from var­i­ous homes who were the ad­min­is­tra­tion's first guests at the res­i­dence.