Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Op­po­si­tion Leader, Dr Kei­th Row­ley, is ex­pect­ed to "buss a mark" in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, but Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says it will be Row­ley who will get a bomb­shell when he sees more than 29 MPs vot­ing against his mo­tion of no con­fi­dence. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said so while de­liv­er­ing the fea­ture ad­dress in Cou­va South on Tues­day night dur­ing a pub­lic ral­ly.

As Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship troops geared up for the de­bate, Per­sad-Bisses­sar thanked Row­ley for pre­sent­ing it with an op­por­tu­ni­ty to boast of its suc­cess­es. She said Gov­ern­ment would turn the sod for the first-ever chil­dren's hos­pi­tal hours be­fore the de­bate be­gins. Ex­press­ing re­gret her Gov­ern­ment was per­haps too mod­est to boast of its achieve­ments, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "Per­haps we have stayed silent for too long. Now Row­ley has giv­en us the best op­por­tu­ni­ty to speak of our achieve­ments."

She said Gov­ern­ment had:

• Raised the old age pen­sion to $3,000;

• es­tab­lished the Chil­dren's Life Fund;

• in­creased phar­ma­ceu­ti­cal, do­mes­tic and house­hold grants;

• in­creased the min­i­mum wage;

• in­creased na­tion­al in­sur­ance ben­e­fits;

• built 350 wa­ter-re­ten­tion ponds;

• pro­vid­ed free trav­el on the bus­es and fer­ries for pen­sion­ers;

• built schools;

• dis­trib­uted cer­tifi­cates of com­fort;

• pro­vid­ed leas­es to 4,000 acres of agri­cul­tur­al lands;

• re­fur­bished fish­ing ports;

• dis­trib­uted 39,000 lap­tops to sec­ondary school pupils;

• built the Cou­va In­ter­change;

• con­struct­ed 4,500 hous­es; and

• rev­o­lu­tion­alised ter­tiary ed­u­ca­tion with new cam­pus­es at San­gre Grande and To­ba­go.

Promis­ing more achieve­ments will be out­lined in the com­ing days, Per­sad-Bisses­sar told sup­port­ers to stand strong and to con­tin­ue to de­fend their par­ty. "The de­trac­tors feel they can drown us out but I am not afraid. None of us is afraid be­cause the mem­bers of this Gov­ern­ment has been per­form­ing, are per­form­ing and will con­tin­ue to per­form for the best wel­fare of the peo­ple of T&T," she said.

She al­so sent a mes­sage to Row­ley, say­ing: "I want to say to Row­ley, don't be sur­prised that on Fri­day in ad­di­tion to the 29 Part­ner­ship votes, you will get some sur­prise votes com­ing in favour and show­ing con­fi­dence in the Gov­ern­ment." Per­sad-Bisses­sar added: "For those who seek to spread pro­pa­gan­da, it will back­fire." She al­so ridiculed Row­ley for mov­ing the mo­tion, taunt­ing him with the words of his for­mer po­lit­i­cal leader, Patrick Man­ning, who once re­ferred to Row­ley as a "rag­ing bull".

She asked: "Can we ever for­give him (Row­ley) for ridi­cul­ing a sec­tion of pop­u­la­tion for touch­ing the feet of an el­der? "Can we for­give him for his un­war­rant­ed at­tack on a high court judge and the in­de­pen­dence of the ju­di­cia­ry?" She added: "His for­mer leader de­scribed him as a rag­ing bull. This is a man bent on pow­er. He sought to de­stroy his own par­ty to ad­vance his own po­lit­i­cal cause. Let us not fear him."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the PNM squan­dered more than $200 bil­lion while ig­nor­ing the cries of the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund, the Cen­tral Bank gov­er­nor and the busi­ness cham­bers to be cau­tious with spend­ing. She added: "Let us not for­get the state the econ­o­my was in when we came in­to of­fice. For three years, we had neg­a­tive growth in the econ­o­my. We res­cued the bat­tered econ­o­my.

"The re­ports show we are on sta­ble growth path and the econ­o­my is pro­ject­ed to grow. We pro­tect­ed the fi­nan­cial sys­tem to the ex­tent that the IMF pre­dict­ed, af­ter care­ful re­view, a 1.7 per cent growth for 2012. This pre­dic­tion has been re­in­forced by the Cen­tral Bank." She vowed to stand strong with her par­ty and to con­tin­ue to put God in front as she strived to serve all the peo­ple of T&T.