Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has queried why the Cen­tral Bank of T&T (CBTT) re­fused to al­low the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's re­quest to ex­am­ine the bank's elec­tron­ic cheque-clear­ing sys­tem.

"What are they hid­ing? And why?” Per­sad-Bisses­sar added at Mon­day night's UNC meet­ing at Ch­agua­nas.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so list­ed 50 ini­tia­tives for the health sec­tor which a UNC gov­ern­ment would of­fer - from rein­tro­duc­ing the Ba­by Grant to ex­pand­ing the CDAP pro­gramme's phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals and in­tro­duc­ing Cath labs in hos­pi­tals to en­able car­diac stent­ing on a 24-hour ba­sis.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who said the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's Spe­cial Re­port on T&T’s pub­lic ac­counts for 2023 was laid in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, not­ed that in the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al's orig­i­nal re­port on the ac­counts, al­most $3 bil­lion couldn't be ac­count­ed for.

She said the big news in the Spe­cial Re­port is that there was no change and the $3B was still "miss­ing."

"Where has it gone?" she added.

"On Mon­day I heard he (Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert) was very bad, bul­ly­ing the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al and us­ing the figleaf of Par­lia­men­tary Priv­i­lege to lam­bast her be­cause she stood for the truth and she did the right thing."

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Gov­ern­ment had "lam­bast­ed the poor la­dy" while the mat­ter is in court and was 'sub ju­dice." She said when the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al went to check the sit­u­a­tion to find the $3B, the Cen­tral Bank re­fused to al­low her to check the sys­tem.

"Why won't they let the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al do her job? Has the Cen­tral Bank been com­plic­it in cook­ing the books with this Gov­ern­ment? What else is the Cen­tral Bank and Gov­ern­ment hid­ing?

"They both over­saw the change of the poly­mer bills. It makes you ask if bil­lions were loot­ed and stolen dur­ing the 100-dol­lar bill changeover. We have to ask, our con­fi­dence in Cen­tral Bank has been di­min­ished. I call for an en­quiry in­to the ac­tions of the Cen­tral Bank and an in­ves­ti­ga­tion of the poly­mer $100 bills- we’ll do it when we re­turn to Gov­ern­ment,” she said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Mon­day was the fi­nal sit­ting of the fourth Ses­sion of Par­lia­ment and T&T is now in an elec­tion year. But she said while Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley was say­ing "no elec­tion now," act­ing Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young was warn­ing PN­Mites to pre­pare for bat­tle.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said Im­bert had been to­tal­ly emas­cu­lat­ed, since Young "took away" his role as PNM chair­man and then his role as act­ing PM.

"Don't be sur­prised when Bud­get de­bate starts, it might be Stu­art read­ing the Bud­get. He climb­ing all over poor lit­tle Im­bert, poor fel­la... Faris, Fos­ter and Pen­ny hang­ing on by a thread wait­ing on PNM in­ter­nal elec­tions in No­vem­ber ..." she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there is an "elec­tion bud­get" on its way this month.

"So look out for all kinds of promis­es that the PNM does not in­tend to de­liv­er."

Not­ing pro­posed leg­is­la­tion such as the To­ba­go au­ton­o­my bills and for Cam­paign Fi­nance re­form, which will be done in the fi­nal ses­sion of Par­lia­ment ahead, Per­sad-Bisses­sar ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of seek­ing to "ma­m­aguy To­bag­o­ni­ans" on the au­ton­o­my bills. She not­ed this was pre­sent­ed since 2020.

She al­so ques­tioned if three of the Prime Min­is­ter's friends had gone on the same flight as he did and if it was a med­ical check-up the PM and his friends all went on, or a "golf-up."