Reinforcing the point that Prime Minister Patrick Manning has been making on the political platform for the past few days, Finance Minister Karen Tesheira says a coalition government will only bring instability to T&T. "So what do I hope for them if they come into power?... It would be a sad day for T&T," she said. "I don't even know if I could call it a unity, because it is two coalition groups who are saying that they could form a Government and what this country does not need and cannot afford is more infighting.
"And one of the things they do very well is fight and they fight not only behind closed doors, but in the full glare. "This country cannot afford to be traumatised like that and to take the risk of that kind of instability and infighting. "We are supposed to be focusing on running the country, focusing on taking the country forward and yet they spend most of their energies in their public bickerings on the UNC side, and the other side, the COP. "I don't know who is the leader, whether it is Mr Winston Dookeran, Ms Wendy Lee Yuen, Prakash Ramadhar, I'm not sure," she said. She told the media this yesterday after her presentation at a breakfast meeting on the Financial Intelligence Unit at the Hyatt Regency Hotel, Port-of-Spain.
"What I do say is if you do have the maturity, and some countries do have the levels of maturity, in the more homogenous societies the same things will assist and there are coalition governments that will work," Tesheira said. "However, in the context of our experience with the two attempts and the players being the same players, I do not hold out any hope," she said. "We have gone too far in terms of the 20/20 Vision to take the risk of putting persons... who say they have unity but their actions do not show that," she said.