Gail Alexan­der

The Pi­ar­co Air­port case that dragged on against for­mer prime min­is­ter Bas­deo Pan­day, his wife Oma and and oth­ers for 25 years were all part of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment's smear and slan­der ma­chine of lies to make peo­ple feel the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress was cor­rupt, says UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

"And you must nev­er get chained up by the smears, slan­der and pro­pa­gan­da that the PNM per­pe­trates! Do not be­lieve their slan­der­ous claims! And they'll come with more!” Per­sad- Bisses­sar warned at last night's UNC Fo­rum in Ch­agua­nas.

Ac­cus­ing the PNM of us­ing a smear and slan­der ma­chine as a smoke­screen, she added, "Af­ter 25 years of slan­der and lies to try to bring down the UNC gov­ern­ment, the case against Mr Pan­day, his wife, Ish Gal­barans­ingh, Bri­an Kuei Tung and Car­los John - 25 years of per­se­cut­ing these peo­ple for the Pi­ar­co mat­ter, it's col­lapsed! This sort of smear and slan­der is a ma­jor flank of the PNM's cam­paign!"

Say­ing the Pi­ar­co case was played out year af­ter year, decade af­ter decade, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said it was nev­er meant to suc­ceed in court but to drag on as long as pos­si­ble to have the UNC seen as cor­rupt.

"Mr and Mrs Pan­day up and down in court for 25 years! Every time they go to court, peo­ple say­ing 'Look, look, UNC crooks!' Front page, back page! Even when he was go­ing to form the gov­ern­ment they were try­ing to dis­cred­it him."

She cit­ed a 1995 study by a US Cen­tre which not­ed the “Ha­rass­ment of Bas­deo Pan­day" by the then-PM, AG, DPP and oth­er le­gal and po­lit­i­cal peo­ple.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the Pi­ar­co Air­port is­sue al­so mor­phed in­to the con­tro­ver­sy of the Sec­tion 34 mat­ter,

"I have noth­ing to apol­o­gise for on that. No­body es­caped from court with sec­tion 34!"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar not­ed that Email­gate was one of the wickedest hoax­es - which al­so col­lapsed. She cit­ed a re­cent news­pa­per sto­ry on her email al­leged­ly be­ing hacked in the Email­gate is­sue.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ques­tioned if a well-known busi­ness­man was the one al­leged in the ar­ti­cle who paid for Email­gate and the Is­raeli spies' work.

Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts mean­while called on the Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er to probe - and for the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion to say - if Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi sold two Porsches in 2016 and if those were de­clared.

Roberts al­so warned PDP leader Wat­son Duke the UNC had been tak­ing up the is­sue of East PoS peo­ple for a long time and if Duke “now wake up."

MP Van­dana Mo­hit, who said peo­ple can­not even eat “roti and but­ter which we grew up on” due to high food prices, will bring a mo­tion on prices in Par­lia­ment. She called on PNM Sen­a­tor Rishi Sookhai to say if he still stood by com­plaints he made in Sep­tem­ber 2022 about the econ­o­my af­ter he “leapfrogged the po­lit­i­cal fence."

Deputy leader Jear­lean John slammed the fact that it took 50 po­lice to evict six familes from HDC premis­es last week­end, adding, "Then you ask why there is crime?!"

MP Bar­ry al­so Padarath claimed the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion's con­sul­ta­tions on pro­posed rate hikes is a mere “pap­pyshow,” since the rate to be im­posed from June 1 is al­ready known. He warned RIC that the UNC would do every­thing legal­ly to halt the hikes “even if means go­ing to court!”