Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is con­struct­ing a mul­ti-mil­lion-dol­lar pri­vate res­i­dence in south Trinidad. This is ac­cord­ing to for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning, who made the rev­e­la­tion in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, dur­ing his maid­en con­tri­bu­tion in this ses­sion of Par­lia­ment. He said the build­ing was be­ing con­struct­ed at a cost of some $150 mil­lion. Man­ning was con­tribut­ing to de­bate on the In­ter­cep­tion of Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Bill 2010. The bill was pre­sent­ed by Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Brigadier John Sandy to le­galise the tap­ping of phones by the Se­cu­ri­ty In­tel­li­gence Agency. Man­ning dis­played elab­o­rate pic­tures of the PM's pri­vate res­i­dence now be­ing con­struct­ed.

He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar's pri­vate res­i­dence was big­ger than the Prime Min­is­ter's res­i­dence and the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann's. He called on the PM to bring to Par­lia­ment, the re­quired ap­provals for the con­struc­tion. He al­so called on Per­sad-Bisses­sar to in­vite the me­dia to the res­i­dence. Per­sad-Bisses­sar at one point got and claimed that Man­ning was "mis­lead­ing the House." But Man­ning per­sist­ed. Man­ning said be­fore the May 24 gen­er­al elec­tions she was strug­gling to con­struct the house, but much work had tak­en place sub­se­quent­ly. Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion House Speak­er Wade Mark was forced to call on Man­ning to re­frain from im­put­ing im­prop­er mo­tives against gov­ern­ment min­is­ters. Man­ning heed­ed the re­quest, claim­ing it was be­ing done un­der duress. He was crit­i­cal of the in­tent of the leg­is­la­tion. He quot­ed sev­er­al doc­u­ments which claim that there was need for agen­cies like the SIA to main­tain their se­cre­cy if they were to be suc­cess­ful.

Man­ning ac­cused the PP Gov­ern­ment of mov­ing sys­tem­at­i­cal­ly to dis­man­tle the crime-fight­ing agen­cies which were set up to deal with drug traf­fick­ing and oth­er se­ri­ous crime. He said the PP Gov­ern­ment re­moved the head of the Of­fice of Dis­as­ter Pre­pared­ness and Man­age­ment, di­rec­tor of the Spe­cial An­ti-Crime Unit of T&T, and the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er, two weeks be­fore his act­ing ap­point­ment was due to end. Man­ning said the bill in its present form would "not on­ly blind and cause to be deaf our in­tel­li­gence agen­cies, but will se­ri­ous­ly un­der­mine the se­cu­ri­ty of the State. "And when in the fu­ture–and it won't be long again–we be­gin to see the rise in crime and the re­turn of things like kid­nap­pings and so on, un­der­stand that the rea­son for that has to be placed en­tire­ly at the doorstep of ho­n­ourable mem­bers op­po­site," he said. Man­ning al­so raised the is­sue of the abort­ed con­struc­tion of a church on the Heights of Gu­napo. The church was re­port­ed­ly be­ing con­struct­ed by Rev­erend Ju­liana Pe­na.

He in­sist­ed that no state funds were used to con­struct the church. "And no how they in­ves­ti­gate, they could nev­er prove that...It just has not hap­pened," he in­sist­ed. Man­ning said he was blam­ing three peo­ple for the de­struc­tion of the church–Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Jack Warn­er, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. "I want to tell then one thing...That is God's church, not mine," he said. "And there­fore the bat­tle in­volv­ing that church is not my bat­tle, it is God's bat­tle. Let us see how the bat­tle will go from here on." Man­ning said the bill in the cur­rent form was "to­tal­ly un­ac­cept­able to us." He added that the Op­po­si­tion was, how­ev­er, pre­pared to give its sup­port to the Gov­ern­ment "on any­thing that it con­sid­ers rea­son­able and ac­cept­able."