Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Ex-Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) mem­ber Kennedy Swarats­ingh is con­demn­ing re­cent state­ments on the econ­o­my made by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Vish­nu Dhan­paul.

At Tues­day’s UNC meet­ing in St Joseph, Swarats­ingh said T&T was fac­ing a $130 bil­lion debt and there were many in­com­plete projects. He said he chuck­led when Dhan­paul said all those things hap­pened; he was not there, but he was there now.

“I know (Dhan­paul) as a per­ma­nent sec­re­tary in the fi­nance min­istry,” Swarats­ingh said.

“He was in Lon­don for T&T’s High Com­mis­sion there. If you sat there and had all these ideas you have now, why you didn’t pick up the phone and call some­body—your col­leagues, your for­mer boss? But no, all of a sud­den, they have all kinds of idea, yet for the last ten years, they sat and looked af­ter—not the peo­ple.”

Swarats­ingh said he start­ed his po­lit­i­cal ca­reer in St Joseph and was hap­py to end his po­lit­i­cal life on a St Joseph plat­form.

“I’m hap­py it’s with the UNC fam­i­ly,” he said, apol­o­gis­ing to fel­low ex-PN­Mites John Je­re­mie and Karen Tesheira.

“There is no cir­cum­stance where any leader should feel they have a right to call some­body a dog,” Swarats­ingh said in ref­er­ence to PNM leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s at­tack on John Je­re­mie for en­dors­ing the UNC.

Swarats­ingh said T&T was in a cri­sis and the cur­rent PM’s ter­mi­na­tion of the for­mer fi­nance and na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty min­is­ters showed a lack of con­fi­dence in their work. He ac­cused the PNM of “sins of com­mis­sion and sins of omis­sion,” say­ing they need­ed to be “ter­mi­nat­ed due to the things they did that failed and the things they failed to do.”

Swarats­ingh said in the UNC, there was a leader who was con­fi­dent and not afraid of en­cour­ag­ing oth­er voic­es and hav­ing a coali­tion of in­ter­ests.

“As we know, the task ahead will re­quire all our in­volve­ment. To lift T&T from this abyss it’s fac­ing re­quires every­body to get in­volved... the task ahead – we shouldn’t un­der­es­ti­mate what is re­quired... the work ahead is sub­stan­tial,” he said.