Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has told the Gov­ern­ment it will get no sup­port from her par­ty for the amend­ments to the Prop­er­ty Tax (Amend­ment) Bill and has called for it to be re­pealed.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar was the first to re­spond af­ter Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert in­tro­duced the amend­ment bill that will re­duce the tax rate on the an­nu­al rental val­ue of res­i­den­tial prop­er­ties from three to two per cent dur­ing yes­ter­day’s sit­ting of Par­lia­ment.

“We are to­tal­ly against the prop­er­ty tax be­cause it is an un­fair tax. It would cause more hard­ship up­on the pop­u­la­tion. We do not sup­port, whether it is ze­ro per cent, two per cent, three per cent, any per cent. The whole prop­er­ty tax must go,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She in­sist­ed that the tax would bring un­due hard­ship on cit­i­zens and la­belled it a “Pover­ty Tax”.

She re­mind­ed the Gov­ern­ment that his­to­ry is re­plete with rev­o­lu­tions and wars be­cause or­di­nary peo­ple re­fused to pay un­fair tax­es.

“And don’t for­get, in 2009, the Prop­er­ty Tax Act...the law passed by that gov­ern­ment in 2009...was one of the pieces of leg­is­la­tion and one of the ac­tions of that PNM gov­ern­ment that brought down that gov­ern­ment in 2010,” she said.

She called the tax “a di­rect at­tack on the peo­ple” by the Gov­ern­ment.

“What Gov­ern­ment should have done to­day...what it should have done years ago, was to bring a bill to re­peal the Prop­er­ty Tax Act. That is what we should be do­ing to­day,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

She de­nied claims by Min­is­ter Im­bert that her Fi­nance Min­is­ter in the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship gov­ern­ment (Lar­ry Howai) had sought to in­tro­duce the tax in 2014, not­ing that in 2015, Howai cat­e­gor­i­cal­ly de­nied that claim and told the pop­u­la­tion that the Cab­i­net had nev­er con­sid­ered it.

In­stead, she re­mind­ed the House that in 2009, Diego Mar­tin West MP, now Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, had warned his own PNM gov­ern­ment about the hard­ships that the tax could bring.

Dr Row­ley was at odds with Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning at the time and was re­moved as a Cab­i­net Min­is­ter.

She read from the Par­lia­ment’s Hansard record­ing of Dr Row­ley’s con­tri­bu­tion on Fri­day, De­cem­ber 18, 2009:

“I know many peo­ple in this coun­try for whom $100 is much mon­ey. There are many peo­ple in this coun­try who are strug­gling to make ends meet and such per­sons, faced with an in­crease of $200, $500 or $600, they are liv­ing at the mar­gin.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar con­tin­ued read­ing from the Hansard: “Tax­a­tion is nev­er a light mat­ter. It is for the Gov­ern­ment to come clean and say ex­act­ly what we are do­ing. We can­not go for­ward un­der the guise that we fool them and the mon­ey will come in down the road when it is too late. Trust is the on­ly thing that the peo­ple want from the Gov­ern­ment and the on­ly thing to ame­lio­rate or re­move the anger, the re­sent­ment and anx­i­ety, as­so­ci­at­ed with this tax is for the Gov­ern­ment’s spokesper­son to come clean and say what we are do­ing.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “Every sin­gle word of the ho­n­ourable mem­ber for Diego Mar­tin West still rings true to­day. And I ask what­ev­er hap­pened in the last 15 years. What hap­pened? What changed some­one from fight­ing for their poor con­stituents to now say­ing that the prop­er­ty tax is their num­ber one pri­or­i­ty?”

She said when ques­tioned about the tax in the lead-up to the 2015 elec­tion, Dr Row­ley had de­nied it, say­ing that the tax was “done and dealt with”.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar told the House that if the Gov­ern­ment had lis­tened to the peo­ple as it claimed, then there would be no prop­er­ty tax to­day.