Sto­ries by Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress chair­man Dave Tan­coo has heaped scorn on act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young’s plan to curb the so­cial me­dia abuse of women - and Tan­coo says the Op­po­si­tion is ab­solute­ly ready for gen­er­al elec­tion when­ev­er Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley “or new PM” Young calls it.

Tan­coo spoke on both is­sues at yes­ter­day’s UNC me­dia brief­ing.

Dur­ing the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment’s Na­tion­al Women’s League’s In­ter­na­tion­al Women’s Day cel­e­bra­tions at Sig­na­ture Hall in Ch­agua­nas on Sat­ur­day, Young vowed to bring leg­is­la­tion to re­form so­cial me­dia and tar­get the ir­re­spon­si­ble use of it by in­di­vid­u­als tar­get­ing women in par­tic­u­lar should the PNM win the next gen­er­al elec­tion.

On Young’s plans to curb so­cial me­dia abuse of women, how­ev­er, Tan­coo said, “Is Gov­er­ment say­ing they’re go­ing to lim­it or ‘po­lice’ the use of so­cial me­dia? So­cial me­dia is there for a pur­pose and a lot of the in­for­ma­tion com­ing out against this Gov­ern­ment has been via so­cial me­dia. It’s very in­ter­est­ing that has be­come the is­sue for the min­is­ter.”

“It’s al­so an un­for­tu­nate sit­u­a­tion, as this is the same gen­tle­man .. (re­gard­ing whom) so­cial me­dia pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence of his mis­con­duct - his at­tack against a fe­male Par­lia­men­tar­i­an ... Is Young look­ing at polic­ing so­cial me­dia be­cause he was caught abus­ing a fe­male Par­lia­men­tar­i­an?” Tan­coo added in an in­di­rect ref­er­ence to the re­marks Young made about UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in Par­lia­ment last year and sub­se­quent­ly apol­o­gised for.

Lee said, “It’s a good sound­bite as an in­di­vid­ual who’s as­pir­ing to be the next prime min­is­ter but I re­al­ly don’t be­lieve Young will keep his word, as for the last 10 years he sat with in­di­vid­u­als in his Gov­ern­ment who said the most de­grad­ing words on women and he said noth­ing. So he wouldn’t do any­thing dif­fer­ent.”

Tan­coo added, “The me­dia has giv­en Stu­art a ‘free pass’, as they seem to have for­got­ten he was a ma­jor play­er in the Gov­ern­ment in the last decade ... all these plans, poli­cies and ac­tions that he’s sud­den­ly re­veal­ing, why didn’t he do it then? It’s all elec­tion PR for elec­tions, but un­der PNM ‘promis­es nev­er ma­te­ri­alise.”

Mean­while, he said UNC’s can­di­dates will be named as and when re­quired in the course of the buildup of the elec­tion.

“The UNC will an­nounce can­di­dates when we’re ready, we have a wealth of per­son­nel and in­for­ma­tion to se­lect from ...”

The UNC has so far an­nounced 11 can­di­dates out of the 39 Trinidad con­stituen­cies it’s con­test­ing. Lee said UNC’s leader has al­ways re­vealed plans when­ev­er she speaks and the par­ty’s man­i­festo will be rolled out as she speaks.

On per­sons leav­ing the UNC to join oth­er par­ties, Tan­coo said, “This is a free and de­mo­c­ra­t­ic coun­try, the UNC’s a dis­ci­plined pro­duc­tive par­ty. Peo­ple are free to go wher­ev­er they want. I’m glad to see peo­ple of­fer­ing them­selves for pub­lic of­fice. But run­ning a coun­try isn’t a tea par­ty, it’s not about looks or speech­es. I’ve had the ben­e­fit of sit­ting in the Cab­i­net as fi­nan­cial ad­vis­er to the prime min­is­ter - run­ning a coun­try is se­ri­ous busi­ness.

“Cit­i­zens should look at per­sons of­fer­ing them­selves and de­ter­mine if they’re truth­ful­ly ca­pa­ble of run­ning a coun­try and what these peo­ple can do if they ever end up in of­fice. We’ve seen what PNM can do and what UNC has been able to. So, peo­ple will be very aware of peo­ple en­ter­ing this for oth­er rea­sons.”

Tan­coo said he’d seen this be­fore in the last Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls.

“There have been struc­tured group is­sues where peo­ple would have left UNC in a co­or­di­nat­ed, or­ches­trat­ed way. That’s par for the course, it’s pol­i­tics. But you’ll al­so have no­ticed more peo­ple join­ing UNC,” he said.

Lee called on Gov­ern­ment for ac­count­abil­i­ty on the State of the Emer­gency.

“The three months is al­most over and Gov­ern­ment’s yet to ac­count on what we’ve gained for the sus­pen­sion of our rights.”