A glim­mer of hope for trav­el?

Be­cause so much vac­ci­na­tion has oc­curred in North Amer­i­ca, once Trinidad and To­ba­go’s vac­ci­na­tion lev­els reach a cer­tain height and as soon as they im­prove, Gov­ern­ment “will see” on the is­sue of sched­uled trans­port be­tween this coun­try, the US and Cana­da.

Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley in­di­cat­ed this in Par­lia­ment on Mon­day dur­ing de­bate on the ex­ten­sion of the State of Emer­gency to three months.

Row­ley said there was a coun­try where vac­ci­na­tion was go­ing on in a big way. “We can now say very soon, once our vac­cine lev­el reach up a cer­tain height, be­cause so much vac­ci­na­tion has tak­en place in North Amer­i­ca, then eas­i­ly, vac­ci­nat­ed peo­ple can now trav­el from one coun­try to an­oth­er,” Row­ley said.

“So we’ll see: sched­uled trans­porta­tion be­tween T&T and the Unit­ed States and Cana­da, as soon as there’s some … im­prove­ment in our vac­ci­na­tion here.”

But he added Trinidad and To­ba­go still had to be care­ful be­cause the COVID-19 vari­ants in In­dia, South Africa, the US and Eng­land have be­come a fea­ture of the man­age­ment of the sit­u­a­tion. He not­ed South Africa’s sit­u­a­tion, UK shut­ting ac­cess to In­dia as they felt threat­ened by the In­di­an vari­ant and T&T felt threat­ened by the Brazil­ian vari­ant.

On the three-month SoE, he said any rea­son­able cit­i­zen would know it couldn’t be ex­pect­ed that things would dras­ti­cal­ly im­prove in sev­en days. Row­ley not­ed the 2011 SoE when sev­er­al peo­ple were mur­dered. Now, he said every­one in T&T is threat­ened by stand­ing in some­one else’s breath space. He said T&T is among the last to seek an SoE, since lo­cal cir­cum­stances now re­quire it and an­oth­er Cari­com coun­tries were now de­bat­ing ex­tend­ing theirs by six months.

Row­ley said for those who feel this SoE ought not to hap­pen and he’d “fall­en down on the job, “…It has to be the whole world that fall down.”

He reeled off the many coun­tries which had SoEs. Row­ley said there’s no guar­an­tee but it’s the op­tion that worked best by oth­ers be­fore.

He ac­knowl­edged com­plaints, “Ra, ra, ra, ra—restau­rant! (But) restau­rants in Toron­to closed for over 360 days! Al­so Mon­tre­al, Los An­ge­les, Paris, Hong Kong —on­ly this week New York restau­rants opened. And this week, COVID shut down climbers on Mt Ever­est—of all places in the world!”

Sup­port­ing the SoE, he echoed state­ments the Peo­ple’s Part­ner­ship ad­min­is­tra­tion made re­gard­ing their 2011 SoE—that they weren’t be­ing ir­re­spon­si­ble in hav­ing it.

“I say the same to­day,” he added.

Ear­li­er in de­bate, Row­ley said as soon as the sit­u­a­tion re­turns to a place where the Cab­i­net feels this coun­try could man­age the virus with­out the SoE, it would ter­mi­nate it.

“So it’s not to say we’re go­ing for 90 days; it may be and we’re hop­ing we’d be able to ter­mi­nate this in­side of the 90 days,” he said.

“But I want to cau­tion that heav­en for­bid—if we find our­selves as some coun­tries have found them­selves, when they were fight­ing wide­spread com­mu­ni­ty spread—that if by the end of the 90 days we’re in a dif­fi­cult sit­u­a­tion, we will have to take a de­ci­sion then as to what do we do.’’

Ridicu­lous! Sad­dam on be­ing halt­ed

Barataria/San Juan MP Sad­dam Ho­sein, the Op­po­si­tion’s last speak­er, was halt­ed by House Leader Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi on many points he at­tempt­ed to raise, on the ba­sis he was re­peat­ing points al­ready made by the Op­po­si­tion.

Ho­sein ex­pressed con­cern at the ap­point­ment of a for­mer Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment at­tor­ney gen­er­al to head the tri­bunal deal­ing with SoE de­ten­tions and is­sues.

“Jus­tice must not on­ly be done but al­so must be seen to be done,” Ho­sein said, cit­ing pos­si­ble is­sue of ap­par­ent bias on the part of the tri­bunal’s mem­ber.

Al-Rawi, how­ev­er, shout­ed that im­pugn­ing the Chief Jus­tice’s de­ci­sion of­fend­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion and Par­lia­ment’s Stand­ing Or­ders.

“And I take great um­brage to a ju­nior, sit­ting MP im­ping­ing on the ju­ris­dic­tion of the Chief Jus­tice—that of­fends the sep­a­ra­tion of pow­ers!”

Ho­sein said T&T was fac­ing an un­prece­dent­ed time and, “If this is the at­ti­tude of the Gov­ern­ment to the Op­po­si­tion’s (points), they’re in it for them­selves.” He then with­drew the state­ment on the House Speak­er’s re­quest.

Ho­sein was again halt­ed by Al-Rawi’s in­ter­rup­tion when he (Ho­sein) called for test­ing of peo­ple for virus vari­ants be­yond repa­tri­at­ed peo­ple on­ly, as is be­ing done.

Ho­sein snapped, “This is ridicu­lous now Madame Speak­er, it’s an abuse of the Stand­ing Or­ders!”

Ad­vised to move on, he said the cur­rent time is one for lead­er­ship and lead­ers must set ex­am­ples for the pub­lic.

“…When peo­ple go arm-wrestling with­out masks and when oth­ers go on plat­forms with­out masks and bouff the na­tion for not wear­ing masks—that’s the height of hypocrisy! The laws ap­ply to us all equal­ly, no mat­ter who we are.”

The sit­ting, ini­tial­ly pro­ject­ed to end by 6.30 pm end­ed at 8.12 pm. The Low­er House was ad­journed to a date to be fixed, next month, when the mid-year re­view of the 2021 Bud­get will be pre­sent­ed.