SHAL­IZA HAS­SANALI & JESSE RAMDEO

Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young is promis­ing eco­nom­ic trans­for­ma­tion, no de­val­u­a­tion of the TT dol­lar and a brighter fu­ture for T&T with his vi­sion of a “Bold New Chap­ter”, as he warned Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) sup­port­ers not to vote for Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar and the “crooked UNC ca­bal”.

He told the large gath­er­ing at the PNM’s ral­ly at the Ed­die Hart Sa­van­nah, Tacarigua, “It is your du­ty on Mon­day to go out and vote to save your coun­try.”

Young said the par­ty has a strong and vi­sion­ary plan for the fu­ture.

“A re­al plan. A bold plan. A plan not just built on dreams and hog­wash.”

When the PNM was vot­ed in­to of­fice in 2015, Young said, they in­her­it­ed a coun­try that was “hang­ing by a thread”, as bil­lions of dol­lars be­long­ing to tax­pay­ers had been squan­dered, in­sti­tu­tions wrecked and the trust in gov­ern­ment com­plete­ly bro­ken.

“It was not just mis­man­age­ment. It was a be­tray­al. It was a be­tray­al by those that had been tasked to gov­ern us. A coali­tion of mis­fits.”

Young said the UNC was re­spon­si­ble for that.

“The UNC led by who? Led by Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. She led a crooked ca­bal of gov­ern­ment.”

Young said the UNC brought shame to our coun­try, and “we say in one loud, clear voice, nev­er, nev­er again!”

As the PNM seeks its third term in of­fice, Young as­sured that un­der their watch the na­tion will pros­per.

“The Gov­ern­ment I lead, when you put us back in of­fice, will fight, as we fought for the last ten years to de­fend our dol­lar at 6.80, 6.90 to 1. That is what the PNM will do; we will not de­val­ue our dol­lar and go to a float.

“We se­cured an ad­di­tion­al 38 bil­lion dol­lars in rev­enue, and we se­cured our fu­ture by re­struc­tur­ing At­lantic LNG. That has nev­er hap­pened any­where in the world, and that is what the PNM has done for every cit­i­zen of Trinidad and To­ba­go.

“We se­cured, on your be­half, 56 and a half bil­lion dol­lars of for­eign di­rect in­vest­ment in the en­er­gy sec­tor alone. Do not lis­ten to their lies when they say noth­ing was done.”

Once elect­ed, Young said, they would not take away the se­nior cit­i­zen pen­sions from the el­der­ly. He as­sured that his gov­ern­ment would pro­vide safer com­mu­ni­ties “where crim­i­nals would face con­se­quences”, ed­u­ca­tion re­form, the use of tech­nol­o­gy, and young peo­ple would be pro­vid­ed with tools to suc­ceed and thrive. Young al­so called on par­ty sup­port­ers to dis­miss re­cent opin­ion polls sug­gest­ing a po­ten­tial loss for the PNM in the up­com­ing Gen­er­al Elec­tion.

“I have to warn Trinidad and To­ba­go against the false polls you’re see­ing on so­cial me­dia. The polls the PNM and me­dia are us­ing are AI. I have had some young peo­ple reach out to me telling me they were con­cerned, and then they re­mem­bered on PNM plat­forms in the last few weeks that we warned you, cau­tioned you and ad­vised you about their lies and mis­in­for­ma­tion.”

Mean­while, PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley called on par­ty sup­port­ers to cast their votes in favour of the PNM in the elec­tion, not­ing that in­cum­bent Prime Min­is­ter Young is more fit for of­fice and lead­er­ship than UNC’s leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

Dr Row­ley un­der­scored Young’s qual­i­fi­ca­tions and readi­ness to con­tin­ue ad­vanc­ing the coun­try.

“Stu­art Young is clear­ly very phys­i­cal­ly and men­tal­ly fit be­cause the Prime Min­is­ter’s job is a very stress­ful job, and you can’t hand it or shouldn’t hand it to any­one to deputise for you. The oth­er one, she is phys­i­cal­ly in­ca­pable and men­tal­ly un­fit.”

He lament­ed that dur­ing Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s tenure as prime min­is­ter, she of­ten al­lowed nu­mer­ous cab­i­net mem­bers to as­sume the role of act­ing prime min­is­ter dur­ing her ab­sence.

“Every time she left the coun­try, an­oth­er per­son in Cab­i­net was put to act as prime min­is­ter. Vir­tu­al­ly every sin­gle per­son in that gov­ern­ment, all 31 of them, had a ‘toosh’ in the of­fice of the prime min­is­ter.”

Row­ley cau­tioned par­ty sup­port­ers against com­pro­mis­ing the par­ty’s vi­sion and lead­er­ship when they take to the polls to­mor­row.

“If you want to leave a fit, in­tel­lec­tu­al­ly sound, en­thu­si­as­tic Stu­art Young and go and vote for de­crepit Kam­la, then that is your choice.”

Dr Row­ley al­so is­sued a stern warn­ing to vot­ers ahead of the elec­tion, cau­tion­ing that elect­ing the UNC could lead to the de­val­u­a­tion of the TT dol­lar. He said that de­spite the UNC dis­miss­ing the claim, the threat of the bur­den of price hikes dis­pro­por­tion­ate­ly im­pact­ing the most vul­ner­a­ble mem­bers of so­ci­ety was a re­al risk.