Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer gov­ern­ment min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath, Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment Par­ty (PEP) po­lit­i­cal leader Phillip Alexan­der and Ma­yaro MP Rush­ton Paray have all spo­ken favourably about Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s elec­tion man­i­festo plans.

How­ev­er, Ch­agua­nas West MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly says Per­sad-Bisses­sar should do like US Pres­i­dent Joe Biden and step aside.

“Kam­la must go,” Ram­bal­ly de­clared yes­ter­day, af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­vealed parts of UNC’s gen­er­al elec­tion man­i­festo on Mon­day.

Bharath, who re­cent­ly re­con­nect­ed with the UNC af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar reached out to him, said, “I be­lieve the rec­om­men­da­tions form part of a draft doc­u­ment. Al­though I have not had an op­por­tu­ni­ty to see the full doc­u­ment, I would agree with the pro­pos­als laid out, par­tic­u­lar­ly those re­lat­ing to re­form of the crim­i­nal jus­tice sys­tem and jump-start­ing the econ­o­my.

“A re­duc­tion in the cost of liv­ing, par­tic­u­lar­ly food prices, fu­el prices and a liv­ing wage are all pro­pos­als I am in full agree­ment with.”

Paray, whose Unit­ed Pa­tri­ots slate un­suc­cess­ful­ly chal­lenged Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s Stars team in the UNC’s in­ter­nal elec­tions, said, “The UNC lead­er­ship has pre­sent­ed man­i­festo items that, if backed by sub­stance, could in­deed of­fer a path out of the eco­nom­ic and so­cial tur­moil in­flict­ed by nine years of PNM mis­rule.

“Their fo­cus on ju­di­cia­ry re­form, vic­tim sup­port and pub­lic health is es­sen­tial for na­tion­al re­cov­ery. The po­si­tion on the cash­less so­ci­ety is but one com­po­nent of a dig­i­tal econ­o­my. This has to be re­vis­it­ed ur­gent­ly.

“How­ev­er, for these ini­tia­tives to suc­ceed we must ac­knowl­edge the crit­i­cal need for a bi­par­ti­san ap­proach to leg­isla­tive re­forms and fis­cal man­age­ment—an area that was con­spic­u­ous­ly ab­sent from the dis­course. The re­al work lies be­yond the rhetoric and plat­form fod­der. With strate­gic fund­ing and re­spon­si­ble debt man­age­ment, a strong UNC lead­er­ship can re­build T&T. A stronger UNC means a stronger na­tion.”

Alexan­der said the PEP has recom­mit­ted sup­port for the UNC and Per­sad-Bisses­sar, fol­low­ing her man­i­festo an­nounce­ment that any gov­ern­ment she leads would be op­posed to the in­tro­duc­tion of a prop­er­ty tax and com­mit to an ex­am­i­na­tion of the ad­min­is­tra­tion of jus­tice.

“To take such strong po­si­tions on those is­sues takes a mam­moth amount of courage,” he said.

Alexan­der added that the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s an­nounce­ments “align with the con­di­tions we in the PEP set out as ur­gent and im­por­tant and gives us all the con­fi­dence we need to main­tain our sup­port to en­sure that she is elect­ed prime min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go when­ev­er the next gen­er­al elec­tion is called.”

He said cit­i­zens have a re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to them­selves and fu­ture gen­er­a­tions to en­sure that they vote for the en­shrine­ment of civ­il lib­er­ties and con­sti­tu­tion­al rights that up­hold their sov­er­eign democ­ra­cy, as well as to “seek out and sup­port those who take the right po­si­tion on this side of free­dom at great risk to them­selves and their for­tunes.”

The PEP leader added, “We see the hands of those who would ben­e­fit from the re­moval of our rights and lib­er­ties be­hind all the rag­ing dis­trac­tions and po­lit­i­cal tur­moil sud­den­ly present to all who would stand against these agen­das, and we call on all right-think­ing peo­ple to ig­nore all dis­trac­tions, put aside their dif­fer­ences and to join forces on these most press­ing is­sues, as the con­se­quences of fail­ure is a fu­ture too night­mar­ish to en­vi­sion.”

Alexan­der said cit­i­zens should re­call the Patrick Man­ning-led PNM’s dec­i­ma­tion at the 2010 polls.

“Let that be our re­al­i­ty again. Join to­geth­er to sweep from of­fice the cur­rent band of fail­ures that have de­stroyed our econ­o­my, plun­dered our re­sources to en­rich their friends and fi­nanciers, and left a trail of blood, death and cor­rup­tion as their lega­cy.

“The PEP is clear that the next elec­tion is go­ing to be a bat­tle for the very free­dom of our peo­ple and based on that, recom­mit our sup­port an­nounced on March 2 and pledge our­selves, our re­sources and strong voic­es to en­sure Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is T&T’s next prime min­is­ter and will work as­sid­u­ous­ly to en­sure that be­comes a re­al­i­ty.”

Ram­bal­ly: Kam­la should go like Biden

How­ev­er, Ram­bal­ly, a sup­port­er of Paray’s UP team, urged Per­sad-Bisses­sar to step aside like US Pres­i­dent Biden.

“I haven’t lis­tened to a word Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar said on whichev­er day she spoke. In fact, I’m sur­prised that she did, as she seemed to have gone in­to some kind of slum­ber for the past cou­ple of months,” he said.

“In my hum­ble opin­ion, the on­ly thing Kam­la needs to do is to step aside like Joe Biden did in Amer­i­ca and give the UNC par­ty and T&T the room it needs to breathe.”

The Ch­agua­nas West MP added, “I’ll per­son­al­ly pay for a spe­cial long va­ca­tion for both her and Row­ley to leave T&T per­ma­nent­ly, then it doesn’t mat­ter what the man­i­festos are as the peo­ple will fi­nal­ly be put first. I have ab­solute­ly no mal­ice or ill will to­wards any politi­cian but for the peo­ple’s sake, Kam­la must go.”

An­oth­er UP sup­port­er, Cu­mu­to/Man­zanil­la MP Rai Rag­bir, said, “Sor­ry, I haven’t had the priv­i­lege of read­ing UNC’s man­i­festo ex­cept ex­tracts from the news­pa­pers.”

Fel­low UP sup­port­ers Rod­ney Charles and Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne didn’t re­spond to calls.