The de­bate be­tween Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion on the Prime Min­is­ter's re­cent ad­dress­es to the na­tion may be­come a Par­lia­ment mat­ter.

This, fol­low­ing the Op­po­si­tion's re­in­forced push on Thurs­day for an­swers on the ad­dress­es and Gov­ern­ment's po­si­tion that it has "noth­ing to hide."

Af­ter Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar's con­tin­ued con­cerns about Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley's ad­dress­es re­cent­ly, Com­mu­ni­ca­tion Min­is­ter Stu­art Young said there are reg­u­la­tions (Stand­ing Or­ders) in Par­lia­ment if the Op­po­si­tion want­ed to de­bate and an­swers on the mat­ter. He was speak­ing at the post- Cab­i­net me­dia brief­ing.

Ear­li­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on Row­ley to ac­count to T&T "on the true state of the econ­o­my, and not hide be­hind flashy, ex­pen­sive tele­vi­sion pro­duc­tions." She ac­cused Row­ley of en­gag­ing in a "self-in­dul­gent show on prime time on two nights, which was a cam­paign speech dis­guised as an ad­dress to the na­tion." She said he failed to ac­count for what was done de­spite spend­ing $160 bn.

"Row­ley’s lec­ture was a fee­ble at­tempt to launch the PNM’s re-elec­tion cam­paign. It's clear he in­tends to con­tin­ue his cus­tom of speak­ing to and rep­re­sent­ing on­ly PNM faith­ful, with the far­ci­cal 'Con­ver­sa­tions with the Prime Min­is­ter' (last night). The Prime Min­is­ter told cit­i­zens to 'Mind Your Busi­ness', but he was elect­ed to serve the peo­ple, and he must do so in the Par­lia­ment. Is Dr Row­ley afraid to re­port to Par­lia­ment? Let's de­bate his 'ad­dress to the na­tion' in Par­lia­ment. I've filed in Par­lia­ment no­tice of a mo­tion to de­bate the de­tails of his ad­dress. The ball's in your court, Prime Min­is­ter."

How­ev­er, Young said when the PNM want­ed a de­bate with Per­sad- Bisses­sar when she was prime min­is­ter in 2015, "she backed out....so if she's se­ri­ous about the de­bate now, her han­dlers can put it in writ­ing. I don't think the Prime Min­is­ter will have a prob­lem if there's a prop­er­ly struc­tured de­bate, but I don't think she's se­ri­ous, he said.

He said the Op­po­si­tion was try­ing to change the nar­ra­tive of the facts in Row­ley's ad­dress­es, "I'm not hear­ing any Op­po­si­tion re­sponse on the facts, let them come to Par­lia­ment and raise the ques­tions, we have noth­ing to hide."

Young said the lev­el of in­ter­est in the ad­dress­es was sur­pris­ing and in­ter­est­ing. He said the PM used a slight­ly dif­fer­ent, fresh ap­proach since it was de­cid­ed to move away from stand­ing at a podi­um and speak­ing, to a more in­ter­ac­tive method with slides. "It's been quite ef­fec­tive," he said.

Young main­tained the pre­sen­ta­tions were ad­dress­es to the na­tion and one tele­vi­sion sta­tion had in­cor­rect­ly stat­ed it was a paid po­lit­i­cal an­nounce­ment.

He said the event was filmed at NA­PA and while there was "al­ways some cost as­so­ci­at­ed with film­ing" he didn't have the cost at hand. He said me­dia con­ces­sion­aires' li­cences in­clud­ed an oblig­a­tion to pro­vide free air time for Gov­ern­ment and that was used. He said all TV sta­tions agreed to car­ry it at the time re­quest­ed.

On whether this was an un­fair cam­paign­ing ad­van­tage over the Op­po­si­tion, he asked if any time the PM ad­dressed the na­tion, it would be viewed as cam­paign­ing be­cause 2019 is an elec­tion year. "It's just a dif­fer­ent style," he said.

Young al­so de­fend­ed For­eign Af­fairs Min­is­ter Den­nis Moses' at­ten­dance at the in­au­gu­ra­tion of Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nicholas Maduro. On oth­er states' crit­i­cism of Venezuela, he said T&T was a sov­er­eign na­tion and had al­ways said the Venezue­lan gov­ern­ment was recog­nised and T&T as a neigh­bour was ready to help.

On US views, he said the US un­der­stands T&T is the clos­est coun­try to Venezuela, con­ver­sa­tions have been held, and what hap­pens there di­rect­ly af­fects T&T. He said T&T is "very care­ful" and the coun­try has com­mer­cial arrange­ments with both the US and Venezuela.

On Cari­com's crit­i­cism of the re­cent Venezue­lan/Guyana mar­itime bor­der dis­pute, Young said it wasn't for T&T to side with any­one since this coun­try has a non-in­ter­fer­ence pol­i­cy.

"We won't be judge and ju­ry for any dis­putes be­tween our neigh­bours," he said.

Works Min­is­ter: Hop­ing for good sense from Curepe landown­ers

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan is hop­ing good sense will pre­vail with four Curepe landown­ers be­fore the Mar­shals of the High Court en­forces war­rants for com­pul­so­ry ac­qui­si­tion of their prop­er­ties which are need­ed for the Curepe In­ter­change.

He added that a rup­tured wa­ter main which af­fect­ed the home of one landown­er was not caused by pile-dri­ving for the In­ter­change. Sinanan said the rup­tured main oc­curred on a WASA valve which had been leak­ing and WASA re­ceived help from In­ter­change con­trac­tors to re­pair it.

He re­it­er­at­ed that the Min­istry on Wednes­day signed some of the war­rants for pos­ses­sion of some of the prop­er­ties need­ed for the project, but this didn't stop the ne­go­ti­a­tions from con­tin­u­ing. He said of the five prop­er­ties crit­i­cal­ly need­ed for the In­ter­change, one own­er had ac­cept­ed Gov­ern­ment's 80 per cent of­fer while the ne­go­ti­a­tions con­tin­ue with that per­son.

"But some res­i­dents and com­men­ta­tors are say­ing Gov­ern­ment's forc­ing peo­ple to ac­cept the Gov­ern­ment's val­ue - that's not true. Most oc­cu­piers would un­der­stand that ac­cept­ing the 80 per cent of­fer wouldn't prej­u­dice their right to ne­go­ti­a­tions. "

"There are on­ly four more landown­ers (at is­sue). There was a meet­ing on Wednes­day and I'm hop­ing for a favourable re­sponse. I hope good sense will pre­vail be­fore the Mar­shal en­forces the war­rants so we can have va­cant pos­ses­sion in­stead."

He said he al­so hoped the con­trac­tors won't charge for down­time on the project. Sinanan said the Min­istry is do­ing a re­port for Cab­i­net on land ac­qui­si­tion is­sues where the rest of the Point Fortin High­way project is con­cerned.