Chester Sam­bra­no

Se­nior Re­porter/Pro­duc­er

chester.sam­bra­no@guardian.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar is con­fi­dent the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress will win the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion when­ev­er it is called.

“Do I look like I am un­hap­py? We will win this lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion, peo­ple have been suf­fer­ing for too long, they are fed-up, you just walk the block, go to the street, even peo­ple in some PNM ar­eas are to­tal­ly fed-up of the in­com­pe­tence, lazi­ness,” Per­sad Bisses­sar said yes­ter­day in the wake of the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment that the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion would be called with­in 90 days.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke with re­porters at the Par­lia­ment mo­ments af­ter the PM’s state­ment in the cham­ber.

“I think the Gov­ern­ment need to stop cry­ing about the Court of Ap­peal and the High Court. The fi­nal court of our land (Privy Coun­cil) has ruled and that is the de­ci­sion, you can­not take a mi­nor­i­ty rul­ing of a low­er court, an in­fe­ri­or court, to jus­ti­fy some kind of il­le­gal­i­ty, it was wrong, they were wrong and they must take the blame for what was wrong. We are in this mess be­cause they were wrong,” she said.

She not­ed that the UNC had warned the Gov­ern­ment about the path it was tak­ing.

She al­so crit­i­cised the Gov­ern­ment for tak­ing a week af­ter the rul­ing was made pub­lic to ad­dress the mat­ter.

“They did every­thing to de­ny what they al­ready knew and he ad­mit­ted his Gov­ern­ment lost at the Privy Coun­cil, call­ing the new elec­tion.”

Per­sad Bisses­sar de­scribed the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form leg­is­la­tion as a smoke screen and a way to avoid the polls.

“It seems the Gov­ern­ment is dead­ly afraid of the elec­torate, of the peo­ple of this coun­try and will de­lay as far as they can for as long as they can hold­ing off valid elec­tions in this coun­try.”

But as she quot­ed for­mer PNM Chief Whip Ken­neth Val­ley’s fa­mous “you can run but you can’t hide” quote, she said, “I want to warn the Gov­ern­ment to­day, you have run for so far, you will con­tin­ue to run in this 90 days but you can­not hide, the elec­torate will be there wait­ing to vote you out.”

She said the UNC had al­ready be­gun prepa­ra­tions for the elec­tion and had all nom­i­na­tions in­side for all the seats and had al­so be­gun the process of screen­ing po­ten­tial can­di­dates.

She re­vealed that among the cam­paign is­sues the UNC will fo­cus on will be crime, un­em­ploy­ment, job loss­es and flood­ing.

She lament­ed the fact that un­til then, the coun­cils will not be op­er­at­ing as nor­mal, par­tic­u­lar­ly with the im­pend­ing rainy sea­son.

“These peo­ple are in lim­bo. In my re­spect­ful view, the law is clear, they, as I said, have re­tired as of De­cem­ber, they can­not func­tion, apart from the may­ors and chair­men.”

She said the UNC’s lawyers will study the Prime Min­is­ter’s state­ment to the Par­lia­ment to see what as­pect of the lo­cal gov­ern­ment op­er­a­tions the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to val­i­date.

She said she hoped how the mat­ter had played out, with the Gov­ern­ment be­ing man­dat­ed to go to the polls, would work out in the UNC’s favour.

“The Gov­ern­ment is op­er­at­ing il­le­gal­ly, they have been op­er­at­ing against the true ten­ants of democ­ra­cy and I hope peo­ple could see it,” she said.

In the last Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tion in 2019, both the UNC and PNM se­cured sev­en seats each.