KEVON FELMINE

kevon.felmine@guardian.co.tt

De­spite the Gov­ern­ment claim­ing vic­to­ry in the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port tri­al in the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar ex­pects there will be an ap­peal.

“We would just have to await the out­come of any ap­peal. You know these mat­ters nev­er stay there. They al­ways ap­peal, so we will await the out­come of the ap­peal be­fore we say more,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia at the Moru­ga/Table­land Con­stituen­cy’s Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day cel­e­bra­tions in Moru­ga on Thurs­day, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she did not have the ben­e­fit of read­ing the tran­script of the judge­ment. There­fore, she lim­its her com­ments un­til she reads them. On Wednes­day, Mi­a­mi Dade Cir­cuit Court Judge Reem­ber­to Di­az award­ed the State a US$100M judg­ment in the civ­il as­set for­fei­ture tri­al stem­ming from the Pi­ar­co In­ter­na­tion­al Air­port cor­rup­tion probe.

It was a mat­ter the PNM Gov­ern­ment pur­sued in Mi­a­mi since 2004 against for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Bri­an Kuei Tung, T&T busi­ness­man Steve Fer­gu­son and US busi­ness­man Raul Gutier­rez Jr.

A ju­ry con­clud­ed that the three de­fen­dants were li­able for US$32,385,988 in dam­ages suf­fered by T&T. The court grant­ed the rack­e­teer­ing claims made by T&T, which tre­bled dam­ages.

Mean­while, de­liv­er­ing re­marks at the cel­e­bra­tions at the Moru­ga Mul­ti-Pur­pose Sport and Youth Fa­cil­i­ty, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the con­tri­bu­tions and courage of the Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty have al­ways in­spired the na­tion and her Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC), which her­ald­ed some of her par­ty’s ac­com­plish­ments for the faith. Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­called that UNC de­clared Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Lib­er­a­tion Day a pub­lic hol­i­day in 1996.

She said the UNC gov­ern­ment al­so con­struct­ed and opened St. Bar­bara’s Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist Pri­ma­ry School in 2013 and the first-ever Shouter Bap­tist ear­ly child­hood care and ed­u­ca­tion school.

“And when we form the next gov­ern­ment, I will con­struct a mod­ern sec­ondary school for the Spir­i­tu­al Shouter Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty. As you know, ed­u­ca­tion is some­thing very im­por­tant to me and the par­ty I lead. When we form the next gov­ern­ment, we will con­tin­ue our push to en­sure all chil­dren of all ages, and in­deed old­er per­sons who wish to con­tin­ue learn­ing, are af­ford­ed the op­por­tu­ni­ties to do so.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC’s plans for ed­u­ca­tion and young peo­ple in­clude amend­ing cur­ric­u­la to in­clude new sub­jects, par­tic­u­lar­ly in In­for­ma­tion Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Tech­nol­o­gy, in­clud­ing cod­ing and oth­er dig­i­tal skills.

“The new Spir­i­tu­al Bap­tist Shouter High School will ben­e­fit from this rev­o­lu­tion in ed­u­ca­tion, as will all the sec­ondary schools in our na­tion. The great­est gift we can give to the young ones in the Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty is a good ed­u­ca­tion. That is the on­ly way to con­tin­ue the up­lift­ment of the faith.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said her Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship coali­tion gov­ern­ment un­der­stood the im­por­tance of mov­ing with the times. It was why it im­ple­ment­ed the lap­top pro­gramme. She promised to re­turn the pro­gramme to sec­ondary schools and en­sure all pri­ma­ry school stu­dents have a tablet.

“This is my pledge to you. We will in­vest in the chil­dren of the spir­i­tu­al shouter Bap­tist com­mu­ni­ty.”