Shar­lene Ram­per­sad

Hours af­ter the High Court dis­missed the UNC's elec­tion pe­ti­tion, the op­po­si­tion par­ty held a meet­ing and fo­rum in Cou­va, ral­ly­ing sup­port­ers for the up­com­ing lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.

Ad­dress­ing the hun­dreds gath­ered at the par­ty's Cou­va South re­gion­al of­fice on Fri­day night, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­scribed the rul­ing as a vic­to­ry.

"I can feel it, I can taste it and I know vic­to­ry is ours tonight!" she said. "To­day I de­clare vic­to­ry in the UNC elec­tion cam­paign!! Let no one fool you."

"This is like the po­lice lock up a man for buy­ing gan­ja, but af­ter they lock him and bring him to court, they find out he con­sumed the gan­ja al­ready, so the po­lice say you break the law but since you use it up al­ready, you can go home. How can you break the law and still end up with some­thing that is le­gal?"

"That is why I said ear­li­er to­day, we will chal­lenge that part of the judge­ment which up­held the re­sults."

Dozens of lo­cal gov­ern­ment nom­i­nees were an­nounced through­out the night and Per­sad-Bisses­sar praised them for their will­ing­ness to serve.

"The young, the not-so-young, span­ning the length and breadth of Trinidad and To­ba­go. Over the past weeks, we have screened hun­dreds of can­di­dates who are will­ing to serve you and I say you have the great­est pow­er in your hand and that is your vote. You have to vote them out in the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was crit­i­cal of the PNM ad­min­is­tra­tion, say­ing they had done noth­ing since tak­ing of­fice on Sep­tem­ber 7, 2015.

"The Row­ley Gov­ern­ment has failed to de­liv­er on any­thing they have promised, re­ports are com­ing in from all over this coun­try that the Row­ley Gov­ern­ment is a do-noth­ing gov­ern­ment," she said.

Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Dr Bhoe Tewarie, al­so lashed out at the Gov­ern­ment.

"Noth­ing has been hap­pen­ing. No eco­nom­ic ac­tiv­i­ty, no ac­tions, or de­ci­sions and with that, no con­fi­dence in a pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic fu­ture and there­fore what we have is a stand­still econ­o­my head­ed for de­cline," he said.

"No ac­tiv­i­ty or ac­tion or di­rec­tion from Gov­ern­ment. A hold-strain per­spec­tive from the pri­vate sec­tor. The re­sult is loss of jobs, down­ward move­ment of busi­ness prof­it, no new jobs be­ing cre­at­ed, no new in­vest­ment, re­straint on busi­ness ex­pan­sion, sti­fled en­tre­pre­neur­ship, more so­cial and eco­nom­ic stress on more peo­ple."