Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

For­mer Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) St Joseph MP Kennedy Swarats­ingh, who de­buted on the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' eco­nom­ic con­sul­ta­tion plat­form in St Joseph last night, has slammed cur­rent dif­fi­cul­ties in T&T and en­dorsed Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to be the next prime min­is­ter.

"I'm not here as a for­mer PNM MP or as a UNC mem­ber but as a con­cerned T&T cit­i­zen. I'm here as a T&T cit­i­zen not just to give her my en­dorse­ment but to al­so give her my ideas," Swarats­ingh told the au­di­ence at the La Joya Com­plex Au­di­to­ri­um.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who greet­ed the Tu­na­puna-born Swarats­ingh when she ar­rived on the plat­form, thanked him for his con­tri­bu­tion in her fea­ture ad­dress.

"The man bright ... brighter than a light bulb. He shared a lot of ideas and I thank him for mak­ing that spe­cial trip back to T&T (from Bar­ba­dos)," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

A for­mer priest for 20 years and chap­lain in the De­fence Force, Swarats­ingh, who said he grew up in St Joseph, was the PNM's St Joseph MP dur­ing the Patrick Man­ning ad­min­is­tra­tion's term over 2007-2010. He was Min­is­ter of Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion. In the 2010 elec­tion, Swarats­ingh who lost to the UNC's Her­bert Vol­ney, faced al­le­ga­tions by UNC front­lin­ers, in­clud­ing from Jack Warn­er, who was al­so at the UNC's meet­ing last night.

In his ad­dress, Swarats­ingh said it was a strange feel­ing to be on the UNC side. He greet­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar as his for­mer col­league in the Par­lia­ment on op­po­site sides. He said he left pol­i­tics in 2010 when he lost to Vol­ney and ob­tained a job in Bar­ba­dos in 2011, as he couldn't get a job lo­cal­ly.

He added, "St Joseph is my home­town, which in­stilled in us a deep love of our coun­try and what hap­pens to it...in our days we re­al­ly en­joyed the fruits of what it is to live in a beau­ti­ful coun­try."

Swarats­ingh, who said he wasn’t there to ‘eat a food’ but had been asked to give his thoughts, said he was at the meet­ing as in his St Joseph com­mu­ni­ty, there comes a time when “we have to say ‘enough is enough' - move aside and give some se­ri­ous peo­ple the op­por­tu­ni­ty to do what they have to do.”

Swarats­ingh, who de­tailed his work in Bar­ba­dos with the CAF bank and the fact that cap­i­tal is need­ed for in­ject­ing in­to de­vel­op­ing the en­er­gy sec­tor, added, "One of the dif­fi­cul­ties we've had in T&T is that we've lost our pre­em­i­nent place as the fi­nan­cial pow­er­house of the Caribbean.

"One of the dif­fi­cul­ties in T&T is that the rank and file and the very mar­gin­alised peo­ple are suf­fer­ing even more and be­ing pushed fur­ther down that scale...one of the dif­fi­cul­ties is al­so that even if we were to in­vest in some of these projects now, it will still take a while for them to come to fruition."

"So, in the im­me­di­ate term we have to give peo­ple hope, con­fi­dence and be em­pa­thet­ic and the on­ly rep­re­sen­ta­tive of that we can find in the po­lit­i­cal sce­nario to­day is the ho­n­ourable Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar," he added to cheers.

Swarats­ingh, who cit­ed the UNC/PP gov­ern­ment's in­vest­ment in buy­ing US$325 mil­lion in CAF, not­ed it had en­ti­tled T&T to US$1.2B in sup­port fund­ing for de­vel­op­ment.

"Un­for­tu­nate­ly, UNC came out of of­fice in 2015 and be­fore they could ac­cess that mon­ey, Colm Im­bert be­came fi­nance min­is­ter ... I'm not here to bad talk any­body but give facts," he said.

Swarats­ingh de­tailed how he at­tempt­ed to help with var­i­ous de­vel­op­ments through his CAF work, but noth­ing ma­te­ri­alised then. He said CAF is an agency that con­tin­ues to be un­der­utilised.

"As we move for­ward, I rec­om­mend to the Ho­n­ourable Op­po­si­tion Leader, when she be­comes prime min­is­ter, is to get a re­volv­ing fa­cil­i­ty, we should do sus­tain­able com­mu­ni­ties with hous­ing - Tatil mustn't be the on­ly place where 'we treat peo­ple like peo­ple'."

He said there is so much avail­able to T&T but the way in which sys­tems are de­signed, it's weighed down by bu­reau­cra­cy and banks should be giv­en more lee­way for peo­ple to bring mon­ey back to T&T. He said he'd not­ed meet­ings be­ing held with banks.

"We should be do­ing that reg­u­lar­ly, so who­ev­er oc­cu­pies on be­half of Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar must be some­one who can bring con­fi­dence...," he said.

Swarats­ingh said as a fi­nance pro­fes­sion­al, he couldn’t go to any­one to build any­thing that he wouldn’t know how to fin­ish.

"And since when do we get in­volved in build­ing build­ings to com­mem­o­rate rather than op­er­ate ... and if we in­vest in a To­ba­go Air­port, we must in­vest in To­ba­go it­self ... to grow tourism you need rooms.”

Crit­i­cal of the Gov­ern­ment's re­liance on the Drag­on gas deal with Venezuela, he said there are many as­sets like Petrotrin that are un­der­utilised.

”You have re­al so­lu­tions for peo­ple who want to work, be in­no­v­a­tive and imag­i­na­tive and if Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar can do that, then vot­ing for her and the UNC is like Or­chard juice, 'a per­fect­ly nat­ur­al choice'."

UNC St Joseph can­di­date De­vesh Ma­haraj, who not­ed the PNM had a "mas­sive walk" in St Joseph ear­li­er, said he'd in­vite Swarats­ingh to walk with him in St Joseph.

Span­ish as sec­ond com­pul­so­ry lan­guage in schools

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who de­tailed UNC man­i­festo promis­es, stressed, "No prop­er­ty tax, low­er cor­po­ra­tion tax­es."

She al­so list­ed Span­ish as a com­pul­so­ry sec­ond lan­guage in all schools, "not be­cause of the num­ber of Venezue­lans here but to en­hance our busi­ness's abil­i­ty to op­er­ate in South Amer­i­ca."

She said a UNC gov­ern­ment would seek new and en­hanced Cari­com agree­ments and dereg­u­late process­es to start busi­ness­es, not­ing they are cur­rent­ly too long and pro­hib­i­tive.

She de­tailed plans for the East-West cor­ri­dor, in­clud­ing a steel­pan man­u­fac­tur­ing fa­cil­i­ty in East Port-of-Spain and busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing gener­ic med­ica­tion, fur­ni­ture, glass­ware, cloth­ing and e-waste re­cy­cling.

"The UNC is a job cre­ator," she added.