Gov­ern­ment’s up­com­ing par­lia­men­tary cau­cus, which will plan for the rest of the par­lia­men­tary year, is ex­pect­ed to dis­cuss items, in­clud­ing the progress of pro­posed law and oth­er mat­ters on Par­lia­ment’s agen­da—and fur­ther gen­er­al elec­tion plan­ning, ac­cord­ing to Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sources.

On Thurs­day, a state­ment from the leader of the Par­lia­men­tary Cau­cus and Cab­i­net, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is, con­firmed the meet­ing.

The state­ment not­ed that as the par­lia­men­tary term comes to an end in Au­gust 2025, the PNM Par­lia­men­tary Cau­cus will meet in re­treat over the 5th and 6th of Jan­u­ary, 2025, in To­ba­go.

“The pur­pose of the re­treat, which the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter will chair, is for the team to re­view its ac­tiv­i­ties and plan its pro­gramme for the year 2025,” the state­ment added.

Par­tic­i­pants will in­clude PNM’s mem­bers of Par­lia­ment and sen­a­tors. The venue for the cau­cus was still to be an­nounced yes­ter­day. Robin­son-Reg­is didn’t re­spond to a query on de­tails of what specif­i­cal­ly the meet­ing will deal with.

But sources said the meet­ing will like­ly fo­cus on what has been done dur­ing the term, in­com­plete work to fin­ish, in­clud­ing new pro­posed leg­is­la­tion, mo­tions, and oth­er mat­ters that may need to be pre­sent­ed. It is com­ing sev­en months ahead of when the term ends, and dis­cus­sions are al­so ex­pect­ed to as­sist in height­en­ing Gov­ern­ment’s prepa­ra­tions for the poll.

The House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives’ agen­da has no more bills list­ed af­ter the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills were com­plet­ed—and de­feat­ed—on De­cem­ber 9.

The Sen­ate’s agen­da has sev­er­al bills that have not been done yet, in­clud­ing one to es­tab­lish the Pri­vate Se­cu­ri­ty Ser­vice Au­thor­i­ty and to reg­u­late the pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty in­dus­try; an­oth­er to amend the Sup­ple­men­tal Po­lice Act, Chap. 15:02; and a bill to amend the Sex­u­al Of­fences Act, Chap. 11:28.

A Gov­ern­ment re­treat was last held in Sep­tem­ber 2023 fol­low­ing the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion and af­ter the fifth and fi­nal ses­sion of the 12th Par­lia­ment was launched. That was held at Crews Inn, Ch­aguara­mas, from Sep­tem­ber 11 to 13, 2023.

Fol­low­ing that re­treat, Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley said dis­cus­sions had been fo­cused on de­vel­op­ment pro­grammes and plans for the 2024/25 Na­tion­al Bud­get. Fifty ar­eas of gov­ern­men­tal ac­tiv­i­ty were dis­cussed, with pre­sen­ta­tions by each min­is­ter. Ar­eas of fo­cus in­clud­ed the econ­o­my, crime, and en­er­gy se­cu­ri­ty.

Mean­while, To­ba­go nom­i­nees for the East and West seats are ex­pect­ed to be screened just be­fore the cau­cus meets.

Nom­i­nat­ed un­op­posed are To­ba­go East MP Ayan­na Web­ster-Roy and To­ba­go West MP Sham­fa Cud­joe-Lewis.

 — Gail Alexan­der