Senior Poitical Reporter
There will be an “IMF Part 2” under a United National Congress (UNC) government, the People’s National Movement’s (PNM) Aranguez/St Joseph candidate Terrence Deyalsingh warned on Tuesday night.
In his address at a campaign meeting in the constituency, Deyalsingh said the last opposition party that bashed the PNM and promised voters the “earth, moon and stars” was the National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR), which later resorted to the International Monetary Fund (IMF) with policies that cut public servants’ salaries and allowances.
Deyalsingh also pointed out that one-time NAR leader Carson Charles is now the adviser to UNC’s Aranguez/St Joseph candidate Devesh Maharaj. He said there are two paths in the election and one was the UNC, whose campaign has been promising to “do this and that.”
“And you know why Kamla never tells you how is she going to pay the $20 billion in promises that she’s making?” he asked.
“To the undecideds and youths who were not alive in 1986, the last opposition that bashed the PNM and promised the earth, moon and stars was the NAR, which wiped out the PNM 33-3. Everybody rejoiced, ‘We get rid of de PNM! PNM gone! PNM dead!’
“But how did the NAR respond to all their promises they couldn’t keep? They had to go to the International Monetary Fund (IMF), so the IMF was here in T&T under the NAR. Mr (ANR) Robinson, Mr (Basdeo) Panday and Mr Carson Charles - UNC’s candidate Maharaj’s adviser now - they were part of the NAR which brought the IMF to T&T and the first thing the NAR had to do was cut public servants’ salaries by ten per cent and cut their Cost of Living allowances.
“I want to tell public servants, you follow Kamla, Ancel Roget and the PSA president, who say they giving public servants 15 per cent pay increase, and yay, you win the election and you going by Courts, buying new TV, fridge and car. You happy, you get rid of PNM but I promise you, history has a way of repeating itself and is unkind to those who don’t learn from its past!”
Deyalsingh added: “When after six months Kamla and Phillip Alexander and Ancel Roget run out of money to maintain the lifestyle they promised, you we will have the IMF Part 2 in T&T and you see all dem civil servants who following the PSA with Kamla, well half ah all yuh gone.
“When the IMF went into Barbados, which is under an IMF programme, Barbados had to fire 3,000 public servants. What is your fate?
“So, the fork in the road for voters is the IMF and devaluation under the UNC or responsible government under PNM.”
Deyalsingh said another reason for not electing the UNC is that it sees everything only based on race.
Offering “evidence” why UNC leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar didn’t want the Caribbean Court of Justice (CCJ) as T&T’s final appellate court, he quoted a July 2018 letter to the editor by Arthur Dash.
“In his column in the Trinidad Guardian on May 30 under the headline ‘CCJ Tantrums’, Wesley Gibbings stated, ‘We recall for instance Opposition Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s remarkable outburst in 2005 that the court (CCJ) lacked East Indian judges and was therefore unacceptable’.”
Gibbings’ reference was to Persad-Bissessar’s February 2005 statement during a Parliament debate on a CCJ bill, when she criticised the court’s composition saying it didn’t reflect the Caribbean’s population and there was not a single judge of Indian origin when half of T&T’s population is of Indian origin.
Deyalsingh said of Gibbings’ quote: “So what she’s saying is that a black judge cannot dispense justice to an Indian defendant and dem people want your vote and you’re fooled by that? You going to vote for that?”
He said the PNM didn’t see race or colour.
“We don’t go to an Eid festival and muddle up and say who we putting for election or attack the Catholic church like Phillip Alexander,” Deyalsingh said.