Gail Alexan­der

Trinidad and To­ba­go is push­ing the PNM out and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley must im­me­di­ate­ly re­move Fitzger­ald Hinds from Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty.

These de­c­la­ra­tions came from Op­po­si­tion UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar at Mon­day night's Mon­day Night Fo­rum af­ter pre­lim­i­nary re­sults showed the UNC's Khem­raj Seecha­ran win­ning yes­ter­day's Debe South bye-elec­tion.

The PNM's Judy Sookdeo and Pro­gres­sive Em­pow­er­ment's Par­ty's Loren­zo Sam­my lost.

The UNC re­tained the seat held by Pu­rushot­tam Singh who died last year. In the 2019 Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion, Singh won with 2,859 votes. PNM can­di­date then, De­o­dath Jages­sar re­ceived 103.

The Elec­tion and Bound­aries Com­mis­sion is yet to give an of­fi­cial vot­er turnout fig­ure for yes­ter­day's ex­er­cise in­volv­ing an elec­torate of 7,124. UNC ex­ec­u­tive of­fi­cials said at 3.30 pm yes­ter­day the turnout ap­peared to be low due to COVID is­sues in­clud­ing peo­ple who were quar­an­tined. How­ev­er, UNC was con­fi­dent of win­ning by a big num­ber even then.

Last night's Fo­rum was a post-elec­tion cel­e­bra­tion for UNC with speak­ers chortling at PNM's loss and de­mand­ing gen­er­al elec­tions. Per­sad-Bisses­sar speak­ing at 8 pm said Seecha­ran was de­clared win­ner. At that time UNC score­boards list­ed 25 votes for the PNM, 175 for PEP- and 1650 for UNC's Seecha­ran.

Say­ing T&T was push­ing the PNM out, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Debe South vic­to­ry fol­lows UNC win­ning an Ari­ma seat - a year ago- which UNC had nev­er won be­fore. She not­ed PNM's To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly loss in Jan­u­ary 2021 and again last De­cem­ber. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there would be "licks like fire" for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls where there would be two new seats.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar slammed Hinds' re­marks on crime, par­tic­u­lar­ly for say­ing his du­ty wasn't to keep peo­ple safe. She cit­ed mur­ders of women and mur­ders in South Trinidad last Sat­ur­day and four more that night in Diego Mar­tin, "in the Prime Min­is­ter's con­stituen­cy and what does he say - noth­ing!!"

"Hinds must go! I call on the Prime Min­is­ter to re­place Hinds! It's trag­ic we have some­one so in­com­pe­tent as Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter. How can the Prime Min­is­ter have some­one so in­com­pe­tent and give him such an im­por­tant Min­istry- that alone tells crim­i­nals that na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty is a joke."

"How heart-rend­ing it is to see our Coast Guard fir­ing on a mi­grant ves­sel mur­der­ing a ba­by. We're mak­ing in­ter­na­tion­al news be­cause of that. I await an ex­pla­na­tion...I can't see how they open fire! Did the oth­er boat have weapons, you could have tak­en eva­sive ac­tion - (Fitzger­ald) Ethel­bert (Hinds) re­sign now!"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar de­mand­ed why Row­ley had re­moved PNM's Mar­lene Mc­don­ald from Cab­i­net when she was be­ing in­ves­ti­gat­ed by po­lice and he re­fused to do the same with At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al Rawi.

She not­ed a po­lice probe is on re­gard­ing Al-Rawi's trans­fer of a car sold to for­mer Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PolSC) mem­ber Roger Kawals­ingh and doc­u­ments showed the car was still in Al Rawi's name up to 2019.

"So if Kawals­ingh's name is on now there's lots of ques­tions to an­swer," she said adding Al-Rawi must be re­moved.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she's writ­ing the Chief Jus­tice and Law As­so­ci­a­tion to iden­ti­fy the judges whom In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tor An­tho­ny Vieira (last year in a Par­lia­ment de­bate) said com­plained to him about the UNC's be­hav­iour at the Oc­to­ber 21 de­bate on the Pres­i­dent. She said judges do­ing so would po­lit­i­cal­ly com­pro­mise the ju­di­cia­ry.

Per­sad-Biss­esar added the UNC will start le­gal ac­tion to ob­tain the le­gal opin­ion that the new Ju­dith Jones-led PolSC re­ceived and which rec­om­mend­ed scrap­ping the 2021 mer­it list for Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er. She said she re­ceived new in­for­ma­tion on the new PolSc com­mis­sion­ers and al­leged PNM con­nec­tions.

"Some of them have no right to be on the PolSC, why don't you have shame and re­sign as UNC will ex­pose you even if we have to go to court!"

She claimed there's in­fight­ing in the PNM with fac­tions among Ro­han Sinanan, Clarence Ramb­harat and Kaz­im Ho­sein, Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and oth­ers and Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters and Sen­a­tors would fol­low UNC mem­bers in Par­lia­ment to "shoo shoo" about things.

"The Row­ley ship is sink­ing, peo­ple seek­ing lifeboats."

She claimed Row­ley had a "melt­down" at the re­cent PNM Laven­tille meet­ing.

"You need to calm down, re­lax, con­trol your­self, sing a song play some mu­sic, read a book - take your goats for a walk."

UNC sen­a­tor Anil Roberts told Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion chair­man Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ter that his "ship was sink­ing be­cause it's full of red peo­ple dressed in red, and red and sea­wa­ter don't mix!"