Gail Alexan­der

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has called out the ju­di­cia­ry, ask­ing who asked them to use of­fi­cers of the ju­di­cia­ry to com­pile a list of 60 pris­on­ers who may be el­i­gi­ble to be par­doned - some­thing which she said is a vi­o­la­tion of the law.

Speak­ing at the UNC's Mon­day Night Fo­rum on in­for­ma­tion about staff in the ju­di­cia­ry be­ing in­struct­ed to "help " with a Mer­cy Com­mit­tee list be­ing com­piled for par­don, she asked if the per­son who in­struct­ed the ju­di­cia­ry was the Prime Min­is­ter.

She said the process used was a fla­grant vi­o­la­tion of the law and it wasn't how con­sti­tu­tion­al par­dons op­er­ate in a democ­ra­cy.

"The PNM can­not en­trust mem­bers of the ju­di­cia­ry on whom should be par­doned - to­tal mad­ness, dic­ta­tor­ship!" she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the pow­er of par­don gov­erned by Sec­tions 87-89 of the Con­sti­tu­tion pro­vid­ed for the Pres­i­dent to act on the ad­vice of a Min­is­ter des­ig­nat­ed by the Pres­i­dent, act­ing in ac­cor­dance with the PM's ad­vice.

"And you have an ad­vi­so­ry Mer­cy Com­mit­tee to ad­vise the Min­is­ter ... you can­not take of­fi­cers in the ju­di­cia­ry to do this job. You can­not in­ter­fere in the work­ings of a Mer­cy Com­mit­tee," she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so called for an im­me­di­ate ur­gent pro­ce­dur­al au­dit of the work­ings of the So­cial De­vel­op­ment Min­istry and Chil­dren's Au­thor­i­ty fol­low­ing the mur­der of lit­tle McKen­zie Hope Rechi­er, of Pa­lo Seco.

"How is it pos­si­ble that af­ter her moth­er was in­sti­tu­tion­alised with men­tal ill­ness, no arm of our so­cial ser­vices de­tect­ed the dan­ger­ous sit­u­a­tion in which lit­tle Hope ex­ist­ed? ... It's clear that in­sti­tu­tions meant to guard and safe­guard chil­dren like Hope and work in their in­ter­est failed. Those in­sti­tu­tions must be held to ac­count, oth­er­wise tragedies like this will re­cur. That's com­plete­ly un­ac­cept­able."

Per­sad- Bisses­sar al­so ques­tioned how the re­cent Agri-In­vest­ment Ex­po would at­tract for­eign in­vest­ment when in­vestors are flee­ing T&T and pre­dict­ed that "noth­ing would come of the Ex­po."

She trashed the Fi­nance Min­is­ter’s claim of a $5 bil­lion eco­nom­ic re­cov­ery as "fake news,” say­ing he based that on da­ta on­ly he has ac­cess to. She said if the econ­o­my re­al­ly re­cov­ered, gro­ceries would be af­ford­able and there'd be word on HSF de­posits. She cit­ed Cen­tral Bank da­ta, plus Cen­tral Sta­tis­ti­cal Of­fice da­ta show­ing GDP de­cline in 2021 from 2020.

"We'll be ready to an­swer all the lies they com­ing with in the Sep­tem­ber 2 Spot­light on the Econ­o­my," she said.

Not­ing the 375 mur­der toll, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, "It doesn't mat­ter how many times TTPS' uni­form changes, it's the same kha­ki pants with mur­ders con­tin­u­al­ly ris­ing."

She ap­pealed to de­nom­i­na­tion­al schools to take mi­grant chil­dren, as they may al­so "fall through the cracks" and grow up to be ban­dits.

MP Rishi Seecher­an, not­ing ris­ing COVID cas­es, said on­ly 11 per cent of the pop­u­la­tion has re­ceived boost­ers and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh had failed in ed­u­cat­ing the pub­lic on the need for boost­ers. Seecher­an called for ad­e­quate bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to get re­for­mu­lat­ed vac­cines from Pfiz­er or Mod­er­na to meet COVID-19 mu­ta­tions.

Seecher­an said Pfiz­er's newest vac­cine, which will be out soon, is ef­fec­tive against both the Wuhan and Omi­cron virus strains. He called for COVID drug de­fi­cien­cies to be catered for in the Bud­get, in­clud­ing get­ting Paxlovid, which re­duces deaths and hos­pi­tal­i­sa­tion by 80 per cent in un­vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple. Pfiz­er signed an agree­ment with man­u­fac­tur­ers to pro­vide it to low-in­come coun­tries.

"If (Deyals­ingh) can't de­liv­er this, it's time to va­cate the min­istry!" he said.