CHESTER SAM­BRA­NO

Lead Ed­i­tor - News­gath­er­ing

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment in­tends to pro­ceed with In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions, in­clud­ing the tra­di­tion­al pa­rade at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah, de­spite the on­go­ing State of Emer­gency (SoE).

De­fence Min­is­ter Wayne Sturge con­firmed the plans dur­ing Fri­day night’s Stand­ing Fi­nance Com­mit­tee de­bate in Par­lia­ment while re­spond­ing to ques­tions from Op­po­si­tion MPs about fund­ing for In­de­pen­dence Day ac­tiv­i­ties and whether the cel­e­bra­tions could pro­ceed while emer­gency mea­sures re­main in force.

The con­fir­ma­tion comes al­most a year af­ter the Gov­ern­ment can­celled the tra­di­tion­al In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade, cit­ing se­cu­ri­ty con­cerns. The de­ci­sion sparked crit­i­cism from the Op­po­si­tion and prompt­ed ques­tions about whether this year’s event would al­so be called off.

Those con­cerns were am­pli­fied on Thurs­day night when Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les sug­gest­ed the an­nu­al pa­rade may not take place for a sec­ond con­sec­u­tive year and said the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) was pre­pared to or­gan­ise its own cel­e­bra­tions if the event was can­celled.

Speak­ing at a PNM meet­ing in Laven­tille, Beck­les said she doubt­ed the pa­rade would take place, point­ing to the ab­sence of vis­i­ble prepa­ra­tions at the Sa­van­nah.

“This is the sec­ond year. If you go to the Sa­van­nah, you will see that the North Stand is still up. They have not been prac­tis­ing for any pa­rade,” she told sup­port­ers.

Ques­tion­ing al­lo­ca­tions un­der sub-item 66, host­ing of con­fer­ences, sem­i­nars and oth­er func­tions, Arou­ca/Lopinot MP Mar­vin Gon­za­les not­ed that fund­ing had in­creased from $190,000 by an ad­di­tion­al $2.3 mil­lion and asked what ac­count­ed for the rise.

Sturge replied that the in­crease was linked to In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tions. Gon­za­les then asked whether the Gov­ern­ment in­tend­ed to hold In­de­pen­dence Day pa­rade ac­tiv­i­ties this year. “Yes,” Sturge re­spond­ed. The Op­po­si­tion MP fur­ther queried whether the en­tire $2.3 mil­lion in­crease would be al­lo­cat­ed to In­de­pen­dence Day ac­tiv­i­ties.

“It will be for the en­tire In­de­pen­dence Day cel­e­bra­tion,” Sturge said.

Asked what the cel­e­bra­tions would in­clude, the min­is­ter said they would cov­er “the cock­tails and so on and the events at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah and every­thing con­nect­ed to it.”

Port-of-Spain North/St Ann’s West MP Stu­art Young lat­er raised ques­tions about the plans in light of the Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent ex­ten­sion of the SoE. Re­fer­ring to the de­bate on the ex­ten­sion two nights ear­li­er, Young not­ed that Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters had jus­ti­fied re­stric­tions on pub­lic gath­er­ings near cer­tain lo­ca­tions be­cause of in­tel­li­gence sug­gest­ing crim­i­nals could in­fil­trate crowds.

He point­ed out that the three-month ex­ten­sion would re­main in ef­fect be­yond Au­gust 31 and asked whether the Gov­ern­ment still in­tend­ed to stage the tra­di­tion­al In­de­pen­dence Day Pa­rade at the Queen’s Park Sa­van­nah.