KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

kay-marie.fletch­er@guardian.co.tt

The Gov­ern­ment has pushed back against Op­po­si­tion crit­i­cism of State board ap­point­ments, urg­ing an end to what it called di­vi­sive racial rhetoric.

Min­is­ter of Le­gal Af­fairs Sad­dam Ho­sein is­sued a sharp re­but­tal yes­ter­day to Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) chair­man Mar­vin Gon­za­les, who re­cent­ly claimed there is a racial im­bal­ance in state board ap­point­ments un­der the cur­rent ad­min­is­tra­tion.

Speak­ing at the post-Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing at the Diplo­mat­ic Cen­tre in St Ann’s, Ho­sein said: “Stop the race talk. We are about gov­ern­ing. This Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress gov­ern­ment is about gov­ern­ing for all of the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

How­ev­er, when asked whether nepo­tism plays a role in these ap­point­ments, Ho­sein nei­ther con­firmed nor de­nied such claims.

Pressed on whether the wives of En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Dr Roodal Mooni­lal and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Clyde El­der were ap­point­ed to the South-West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (SWRHA), Ho­sein ac­knowl­edged that names have been con­sid­ered but in­sist­ed of­fi­cial an­nounce­ments have not yet been made.

“At present, the Cab­i­net has in fact con­sid­ered cer­tain board ap­point­ments. How­ev­er, those con­sid­er­a­tions are se­cret un­til the an­nounce­ments are for­mal­ly made,” he said.

Ho­sein ex­plained that the ap­point­ment process in­volves the sub­mis­sion of Cab­i­net notes through the Min­istry of Fi­nance, af­ter which the Cab­i­net con­sid­ers the pro­pos­als and the ap­point­ing body con­firms the fi­nal se­lec­tions.

He stressed that due dili­gence is done be­fore names are pre­sent­ed to Cab­i­net and that all can­di­dates un­der­go scruti­ny pri­or to ap­proval.

“With re­spect to what you’re ask­ing, those de­lib­er­a­tions — in terms of the names and boards — were mat­ters con­sid­ered by the Gov­ern­ment,” Ho­sein said.

“You will have to wait un­til the ap­point­ments are for­mal­ly made be­fore we can con­firm them. Just bear some pa­tience. There is a process, and we would not want to prej­u­dice any of it at this point in time.”

He added: “Names may have come to Cab­i­net. Those names are con­sid­ered. We just have to wait un­til the ap­point­ments are made. We were very clear—what­ev­er we said in the cam­paign, even while in Op­po­si­tion—we re­main com­mit­ted to hold­ing gov­ern­ment to ac­count, es­pe­cial­ly re­gard­ing the ex­pen­di­ture of pub­lic funds.”