This coun­try is nowhere near ready to es­tab­lish a ref­er­en­dum deal­ing with the de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion of ho­mo­sex­u­al­i­ty and gay rights as it is not legal­ly pos­si­ble says Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.She made the re­marks while field­ing ques­tions from mem­bers of the lo­cal me­dia af­ter de­liv­er­ing yes­ter­day's fea­ture ad­dress at the T&T In­vest­ment Con­fer­ence in Man­hat­tan."At this mo­ment it is not legal­ly pos­si­ble."The draft gen­der pol­i­cy came to the Cab­i­net, dis­cussed at length and giv­en the very di­vid­ed voic­es of Trinidad and To­ba­go. It will not be pru­dent for Gov­ern­ment to pro­ceed in that di­rec­tion... it's too di­vid­ed. There is no con­sen­sus on that is­sue," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Pressed whether de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion was be­ing con­sid­ered, she main­tained it would be un­wise for Gov­ern­ment to go in that di­rec­tion.The PM al­so spoke on the top­ic while hav­ing the one-on-one con­ver­sa­tion with Lak­sh­mi Singh, an an­chor for Na­tion­al Pub­lic Ra­dio, based in Wash­ing­ton.De­scrib­ing the is­sue as "very touchy and sen­si­tive," the Prime Min­is­ter said the pol­i­cy was pro­duced be­fore the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship came in­to of­fice in 2010 and it had "nev­er seen the light of day."This was be­cause the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment faced many per­sons who were against is­sues for de­crim­i­nal­is­ing gays and our present gov­ern­ment picked it up, dust­ed it off and put it for dis­cus­sions again," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She said tremen­dous op­po­si­tion was faced, es­pe­cial­ly from the Ro­man Catholic Church, but the is­sue of gay rights, the PM said, was not re­al­ly for the Gov­ern­ment to de­cide."I think that is an is­sue that is not re­al­ly for the Gov­ern­ment to de­cide at this time in our coun­try. It is an is­sue that the peo­ple must de­cide and there­fore one that may re­quire as a ref­er­en­dum to get the views of the peo­ple... per­son­al views are not good enough."But at this time we are very di­vid­ed in Trinidad and To­ba­go," Per­sad-Bisses­sar added.She urged that peo­ple should not be dis­crim­i­nat­ed based on their sex­u­al ori­en­ta­tion.