GAIL ALEXAN­DER

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress deputy leader Roodal Mooni­lal has al­leged that a min­is­ter is “col­lect­ing bribes” for is­su­ing work per­mits and the Unit­ed States au­thor­i­ties are on “the tracks” of the sit­u­a­tion.

Mooni­lal raised the is­sue at a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing in Tu­na­puna on Thurs­day.

He ques­tioned why Young had put to­geth­er his team with cer­tain min­is­ters.

He al­leged, “What you bring dem back for? I want to tell you, un­der a UNC gov­ern­ment no min­is­ter will be col­lect­ing bribes for is­su­ing work per­mits.

“The min­is­ter who is do­ing that is known and the Amer­i­can au­thor­i­ties know who it is. They are on the tracks, I say no more about that—at this time.”

Yes­ter­day, how­ev­er, Mooni­lal did not re­ply to Guardian Me­dia queries on who the min­is­ter is, when the al­leged ac­tion was done, how many/what kind of per­mits are in­volved, how it was found out, any proof/doc­u­ments on the is­sue, or word from US au­thor­i­ties on their “track­ing.”

Mooni­lal on­ly said, “I’ll re­veal more soon.”

How­ev­er, var­i­ous Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cials in­volved with the per­mit sys­tem dis­missed Mooni­lal’s claims.

Mooni­lal al­so claimed Gov­ern­ment had on­ly out­fit­ted one floor out of the 13 floors in the Port-of-Spain Gen­er­al Hos­pi­tal Cen­tral Block for the re­cent com­mis­sion­ing cer­e­mo­ny. He said the North West Re­gion­al Health Au­thor­i­ty (NWRHA), which boast­ed of build­ing the Cen­tral block, al­so rent­ed a Dere Street build­ing for $400,000 month­ly. He claimed the NWRHA al­so paid $13 mil­lion to out­fit the pri­vate build­ing, with $100,000 ex­tra for main­te­nance and the $400,000 rent.

“NWRHA, tell us who owns that build­ing and if the own­ers had any­thing to do with the con­struc­tion of PNM’s Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters. If they fail to tell you the own­ers, I’ll tell you who owns the build­ing,” Mooni­lal added.

Mooni­lal al­so slammed Young’s ap­point­ment of Arthur Bar­ring­ton as the Strate­gic Ser­vices Agency (SSA) head. “They’re go­ing to give us this man to work with for three years? Not a hell of that,” he said.

He said Bar­ring­ton and T&T De­fence Force com­man­der Hay­den Pritchard had done a re­port on the is­suance of firearms. He claimed Pritchard didn’t sign the re­port but Bar­ring­ton did.

“That led to the un­der­min­ing of the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion, Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er and TTPS—it did ma­jor dam­age to three ma­jor in­sti­tu­tions,” he al­leged.

Mooni­lal claimed Bar­ring­ton was “sign­ing off on a re­port that cast as­per­sions on po­lice of­fi­cers to sat­is­fy a high for­mer Gov­ern­ment of­fi­cial.

“To­day, he’s re­ward­ed as SSA di­rec­tor ... he’ll give Row­ley and Young what they want …and they’re des­per­ate! They’ll hound down Op­po­si­tion mem­bers us­ing the SSA,” Mooni­lal al­leged.

“I call on Mr Young and the Gov­ern­ment, cease and de­sist from mak­ing ap­point­ments to the gov­ern­ment ser­vice when you’re weeks away from a gen­er­al elec­tion and a change of gov­er­nance is im­mi­nent. You ought not to be mak­ing ap­point­ments like that when you’re chang­ing gov­ern­ments.

“Mr Bar­ring­ton is known and he can­not sit as SSA head in the cir­cum­stances we find our­selves in.”

Mooni­lal al­so wel­comed Wendy Lewis, the for­mer pro­to­col of­fi­cer of for­mer PNM prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning. He said Lewis was help­ing San Fer­nan­do East can­di­date John Al­i­bo­cus. He said, “Every day, ‘Stu­art Young’s army’ is be­ing de­plet­ed. Wendy and many oth­ers are join­ing us.”

‘PNM change skin but same snake’

Mooni­lal said of Young, “You can’t com­pare him to UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, Young has all the charm of Han­ni­bal Lecter … you can’t un­bul­ly your­self sir …!

“The fel­la was in high school and his name was in ‘The Mir­ror’ news­pa­per! I couldn’t be­lieve when you in high school you could make pa­pers for bul­ly­ing a stu­dent and caus­ing them to drop out and be de­nied the right to do their ex­ams. Stu­art Young did that and he’s no dif­fer­ent to­day!”

He added, “Young says it’s a ‘new Chap­ter’ for PNM but that’s a new chap­ter in an old dis­gust­ing book … they change the skin but it’s the same snake —same PNM.”

Not­ing Young, who suc­ceed­ed PM Dr Kei­th Row­ley, is now en­ti­tled to a life­time pen­sion of $87,000 month­ly, Mooni­lal added that the pen­sion sys­tem is a ”trav­es­ty of democ­ra­cy” and the UNC’s at­tor­neys must de­vise changes to the law on this.

He said Young would have the short­est tenure pe­ri­od for a PM when of­fi­cial pho­tos with terms of prime min­is­ter are put up.

“He won’t see in­side the Par­lia­ment as prime min­is­ter, as Par­lia­ment has dis­solved and the new PNM cab­i­net is split,” he claimed.

“Young can­not run T&T for 24 hours af­ter his ap­point­ment and now he com­ing to tell you give him five years…? That fel­la name Vish­nu Dhan­paul, he’ll be­come the first Fi­nance Min­is­ter of T&T nev­er to de­liv­er a Bud­get speech!”

Mooni­lal al­so said Young had “put his tail be­tween his legs” and con­ced­ed to Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s pres­sure that T&T must have in­ter­nal ob­servers for the elec­tion.