Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has slammed the “scant cour­tesy” which she says is be­ing hand­ed down to cit­i­zens by Gov­ern­ment’s move to have talks on T&T’s crime prob­lem with US of­fi­cials, rather than na­tion­als or the di­as­po­ra.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar made the claim at last night’s UNC An­ti-crime Con­sul­ta­tion at the Na­pari­ma Col­lege, San Fer­nan­do.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so sent a di­rect mes­sage to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“I want to tell the Prime Min­is­ter, who is busy in Wash­ing­ton: that if he don’t like what peo­ple are say­ing about you, the best thing to do is to get out of here to­mor­row morn­ing, get out, get out! You can­not bouff peo­ple and tell them ‘shut up’ be­cause you have a dif­fer­ent opin­ion!”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she had the ra­dio on in her car while she was on the way to the UNC meet­ing and she heard the news that the Prime Min­is­ter had held crime talks in Wash­ing­ton ear­li­er that day.

“Not with the na­tion­als, not with the di­as­po­ra, he’s hold­ing crime talks with of­fi­cials in Wash­ing­ton and this is the kind of scant cour­tesy that this Gov­ern­ment in­tends to hand down,” she added.

Not­ing the Cari­com crime sym­po­sium at the Hy­att in Port-of-Spain last year, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “They won’t come to San Fer­nan­do to talk to you - $5 mil­lion at the Hy­att and what hap­pened since then? Noth­ing. Then the Gov­ern­ment promised us they’d do an­ti-crime talks in our coun­try but that be­came the Cari­com crime sum­mit they held at Hy­att.”

She thanked at­ten­dees for their com­ments that the UNC must meet the peo­ple and lis­ten to them, “be­cause ob­vi­ous­ly what they’ve been do­ing, it hasn’t worked, and it’s not work­ing.”

Dur­ing the con­sul­ta­tions, where speak­ers in­clud­ed UNC coun­cil­lor Vanes­sa Kussie, wife of de­ceased LM­CS div­er Rishi Na­gas­sar, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on Gov­ern­ment to say if it’s true that be­fore the Paria Com­mis­sion of En­quiry re­port was re­leased to the pub­lic—but af­ter the Prime Min­is­ter re­ceived the re­port—whether Gov­ern­ment re­newed the con­tracts of (Paria man­agers) Col­in Piper and Mush­taq Mo­hammed for a fur­ther two years.

She said the re­port was very abra­sive to the both.

“So how can you do that, who’ll guard the guards? If they were the ones the re­port found was cul­pa­ble in their be­hav­iour, then why did you re­new their con­tracts se­cret­ly dur­ing the pe­ri­od be­fore the re­port was made pub­lic? And when the re­port be­came pub­lic, it was clear Piper was found to be li­able in cer­tain ways for his ac­tions in that tragedy site,” she al­leged.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “That’s some­thing Gov­ern­ment should an­swer—why did you re­new the con­tracts of these two peo­ple and who re­newed the con­tracts? Was it New­man George and Paria’s board? Was it the Cab­i­net? As the Cab­i­net had the re­port since last year and de­layed in lay­ing it.

“If peo­ple are cul­pa­ble in do­ing their jobs ... one of our speak­ers said tonight if you hire some­body to do a job and they can’t do it, you fire dem! You don’t go and re­new their con­tract for two more years! The CoE found Paria could be guilty of cor­po­rate manslaugh­ter - what are they do­ing still sit­ting in those po­si­tions?”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said Row­ley and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald Hinds seemed more con­cerned about Gary Grif­fith’s un­der­wear.

“That’s what they came on the plat­form to speak about! In­stead of telling us about plans and so­lu­tion for crime, you (al­so) bouff­ing Mr John­ny (Abra­ham) ...”

She al­so not­ed some peo­ple felt she and MPs should “talk down to them” and give UNC’s plans. But she said the UNC spent years say­ing what its plans are and the con­sul­ta­tions were for the UNC to hear what mem­bers of the pub­lic and qual­i­fied peo­ple had to say and see to­geth­er how “we can build on all these sug­ges­tions to fight crime.” She said the UNC would give its plans at Mon­day Night Re­ports or Pave­ment Re­port meet­ings.

NTA do­ing own an­ti-crime con­sul­ta­tions

The Na­tion­al Trans­for­ma­tion Al­liance (NTA), led by Gary Grif­fith, who ap­peared on UNC’s first an­ti-crime con­sul­ta­tion, is launch­ing its own an­ti-crime con­sul­ta­tions.

An NTA re­lease yes­ter­day stat­ed the NTA will launch the “Jour­ney to Trans­for­ma­tion” with a se­ries of “so­lu­tion fo­cused An­ti-Crime Con­ver­sa­tions, which ti said is in line with the par­ty’s pol­i­cy and will in­clude qual­i­fied na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty ex­perts shar­ing work­able and test­ed so­lu­tions to the crime prob­lem

These talks, the NTA said, will “dis­til so­lu­tions to trans­form na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty.”

“We see this as con­sis­tent with our pa­tri­ot­ic du­ty, and the pub­lic will re­call that NTA po­lit­i­cal leader Gary Grif­fith led the way and was the first to call for an­ti-crime talks with oth­er po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ties,” the NTA said.

“While there is val­ue in hear­ing from the pub­lic about how crime per­son­al­ly af­fects them, cit­i­zens would pre­fer to know that there is a po­lit­i­cal en­ti­ty with the plans, poli­cies, ex­per­tise, and po­lit­i­cal will to bring safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty to T&T.”

It added, “We as­sure the pub­lic, we firm­ly be­lieve that this jour­ney to trans­for­ma­tion shifts the par­a­digm from that of lay­ing blame and com­plain­ing, to that of craft­ing a so­lu­tion-ori­ent­ed mod­el to all el­e­ments of na­tion­al safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty and oth­er de­vel­op­men­tal meth­ods in T&T by iden­ti­fy­ing clear, con­cise and proven strate­gies and tac­tics that can be im­ple­ment­ed with re­al re­sults.”