Gail Alexan­der

The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) yes­ter­day be­gan seek­ing a ju­di­cial re­view of Gov­ern­ment’s re­cent de­ci­sion on the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form law which has opened the door for the post­pone­ment of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment polls.

And a UNC gov­ern­ment will bring law to al­low "av­er­age law-abid­ing" cit­i­zens to legal­ly ob­tain firearms and will change the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Gov­ern­ment's laws that make it hard for such peo­ple to get le­gal firearms.

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced this at the par­ty's Mon­day Night Fo­rum, where Sen­a­tor David Nakhid warned about the Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary School stu­dents' at­tack on their prin­ci­pal.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the UNC is­sued a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter seek­ing the ju­di­cial re­view on Mon­day.

"Gov­ern­ment's il­le­gal­ly post­poned LG elec­tions. They're scared!! But we'll win San Fer­nan­do and San­gre Grande," she said.

The mat­ter was filed by Se­nior Coun­sel Anand Ram­lo­gan for UNC claimant Ravi Bal­go­b­in Ma­haraj.

De­fen­dants are Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Regi­nald Ar­mour and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Faris Al-Rawi - the lat­ter whom she said "...Gave a to­tal 'maca­juel con­tor­tion­ist' move to try and jus­ti­fy post­pon­ing the polls."

The mat­ter is be­ing chal­lenged on the ba­sis that the LG re­form bill in 2019 didn’t state the law would be done ret­ro­spec­tive­ly or ap­ply to cur­rent elect­ed coun­cils. It's al­leged that Gov­ern­ment's ac­tions are unau­tho­rised, con­trary to law, fraud­u­lent, in bad faith, a breach of du­ty, im­prop­er­ly done and in con­flict with the Mu­nic­i­pal Cor­po­ra­tions' Act.

On an­oth­er mat­ter, Sen­a­tor Wade Mark said the Prime Min­is­ter's To­ba­go res­i­dence didn't start at $25 mil­lion, as UNC's Roodal Mooni­lal said last Sun­day, but $17 mil­lion, as was re­port­ed in a sto­ry in 2019.

"And it's now $70m, not $63M - a 270 per cent in­crease!"

Mark called on Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to say if he had con­struct­ed a five-fam­i­ly apart­ment build­ing si­mul­ta­ne­ous­ly as the PM's To­ba­go res­i­dence was go­ing up.

"We have ev­i­dence - we want a crim­i­nal foren­sic in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the con­struc­tion of the res­i­dence!"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said fig­ures re­ceived from the PM's Of­fice (OPM) stat­ed $48.7m was paid on the res­i­dence, with an un­paid $15.4m bal­ance. But she said when ac­tu­al ex­pen­di­ture was to­talled, it wasn't the fig­ures from the OPM and the Fi­nance Min­istry's De­vel­op­ment Pro­gramme (FMDP) for 2021, which gave a to­tal of $74.7m.

"And when we pick up the (FMDP) book this year, we see a fur­ther es­ti­mate of $10 mil­lion. So, every year this thing just climb­ing and climb­ing, by the time we done this thing will be $100m eh.. Which one to be­lieve, the OPM doc­u­ment or FMDP es­ti­mates? They have ques­tions to an­swer!

”Where’s the Con­ve­nient Covid Man – where’s the Prime Min­is­ter… look who got COVID again… how many times is it?"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar queried why the act­ing Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Mc Don­ald was "ob­sessed" with le­gal firearms. Stat­ing she un­der­stood peo­ple's pain, she de­tailed UNC's plans which would favour law-abid­ing peo­ple get­ting firearms "rather than crim­i­nals," which she said the PNM was do­ing.

On the plan to al­low guns to law-abid­ing peo­ple, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "Who don't like to hear that, just don't ap­ply for one..."

Nakhid warned that if the sit­u­a­tion that oc­curred at the Rose Hill RC Pri­ma­ry re­cent­ly was ig­nored, it could end up like the chaos where a video showed Tran­quil­li­ty Gov­ern­ment Sec­ondary stu­dents at­tack­ing their prin­ci­pal - a ref­er­ence to Ann Mar­garet Robin­son - the daugh­ter of for­mer Pres­i­dent and PM Arthur NR Robin­son.

"That's the daugh­ter of a for­mer Prime Min­is­ter and Pres­i­dent - ANR Robin­son. A prin­ci­pal who tried to break up a fight in Tran­quil­li­ty and that is her trau­ma­tised on the ground!

"And every­body feel­ing sor­ry for them ... This is what hap­pens when they (stu­dents) reach high school, that's the be­hav­iour dis­played ... this is where those chil­dren end up. What are we go­ing to do to en­sure that those chil­dren face down on the ground (at Rose Hill ) don't reach to that (Tran­quil­li­ty sit­u­a­tion), where they don't even re­spect a prin­ci­pal of a school - the daugh­ter of a for­mer Pres­i­dent and Prime Min­is­ter."

He added, "Long time in school, you could be fight­ing how much you want. As you hear prin­ci­pal com­ing, every­body stand up against the wall straight. Now? No! The prin­ci­pal of that school down on the ground. That's the lev­el of re­spect - why? It start­ed with a Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter ..say­ing (gun­shots at Rose Hill) were 200 me­tres from the school. This PNM Gov­ern­ment has nor­malised this!"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar asked why En­er­gy Min­is­ter Stu­art Young has two se­cu­ri­ty guards and 24-7 po­lice pa­trol around his res­i­dence, plus his two sons have two se­cu­ri­ty guards each. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said some­one “jumped” her gate a few months ago.

"And it took 40 min­utes for any­body to ar­rive.”