Gail Alexan­der

There was noth­ing il­le­gal in Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress deputy leader David Lee’s trans­ac­tion with a car – but if he is to be charged the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice should go ahead and do so since the par­ty has many good lawyers, says UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, vouch­ing for the is­sue.

She made the com­ment dur­ing last night’s Mon­day Night Fo­rum, re­fer­ring to the re­port that po­lice had ques­tioned Lee last week con­cern­ing the pur­chase of a $2.3 mil­lion Mer­cedes Benz and if the $1.4m in tax ex­emp­tion for it may have ben­e­fit­ted a UNC fi­nancier.

Say­ing the sto­ry was meant to dis­tract, she asked, "Why come with it now - but you can’t han­dle what’s hap­pen­ing to you.” She not­ed a sim­i­lar ac­tion on the car trans­fer by Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi to at­tor­ney Roger Kawals­ingh.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar slammed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on the crime sit­u­a­tion, throw­ing back at him his 2012 state­ment that if the gov­ern­ment can’t deal with crime, then the gov­ern­ment "it­self is part of the prob­lem.” She said in UNC's an­ti-crime plans, a UNC gov­ern­ment would split the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry in­to two - De­fence and Home Af­fairs arms.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so knocked Row­ley’s com­ments on women, say­ing he now want­ed to talk about re­spect­ing women and chil­dren. She said “they” won’t ask Row­ley where he was for 27 days or ask En­er­gy’s Stu­art Young about his Venezue­lan trip and meet­ing Venezue­lan oil Min­is­ter Tareck El Ais­sa­mi but “they” want­ed to talk about Lar­ry Lal­la and Kevin Ram­nar­ine at­tend­ing UNC's Fam­i­ly Day.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on Gov­ern­ment to al­low Venezue­lan chil­dren and oth­er mi­grant chil­dren to at­tend T&T schools. She said there was enough time to get them reg­is­tered and vac­ci­nat­ed. She said when T&T peo­ple go abroad, they get to go to school.

"We should do the same and al­low these chil­dren flee­ing Maduro - and any mi­grant chil­dren - to get a kinder­garten, pri­ma­ry, sec­ondary school ed­u­ca­tion," she said.

She said ap­pli­ca­tions for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment al­der­men are al­so open and per­sons will be screened. She called for Cari­com and in­ter­na­tion­al ob­servers at LG elec­tions.

UNC’s Anil Roberts al­so made nu­mer­ous al­le­ga­tions about Row­ley, say­ing he would “drink med­i­cine" for union leader Michael An­nisette and re­ply to Row­ley’s re­cent chal­lenge to An­nisette.

Roberts said he was warned by a PN­Mite that Row­ley would sue him, but Roberts said, “You can’t sue some­body for talk­ing the truth, my lawyers have al­ready sort­ed a list of wit­ness­es to be sub­poe­naed if Row­ley want to sue. Row­ley send it boy, the dougla wait­ing for you."

He reeled off the names of women he’d sum­mon.

MP Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly, who ques­tioned how halt­ing scrap iron sec­tor work would stop the thieves, al­so slammed the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al’s “emer­gence” to talk about that mat­ter yes­ter­day. He said pend­ing the ap­peal against the AG’s re­cusal in the Mi­a­mi case on the Pi­ar­co Air­port mat­ter, there are oth­er op­tions that those who chal­lenged the AG’s par­tic­i­pa­tion in the mat­ter could ex­er­cise and this would make the Mi­a­mi case longer for T& . He said the dis­qual­i­fi­ca­tion mo­tion is “round one” and there was more to come.