While the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of­fi­cial­ly re­opens its ren­o­vat­ed Bal­isi­er House head of­fice in Port-of-Spain to­day, Op­po­si­tion MP Rod­ney Charles has called on “pa­tri­ots of in­tegri­ty, class and char­ac­ter” to boy­cott the event.

Charles did so via a state­ment yes­ter­day, as he con­tin­ued to ques­tion how the project was fi­nanced by the rul­ing par­ty.

The PNM will launch the head­quar­ters, which was un­der ren­o­va­tions in re­cent years, when it cel­e­brates the par­ty’s 68th an­niver­sary to­day.

In 2019, con­struc­tion of a new Bal­isi­er House build­ing, ad­join­ing the cur­rent Bal­isi­er House head­quar­ters, al­so be­gan. That is lo­cat­ed in what was the carpark next to Bal­isi­er House. The PNM had stat­ed that pro­ceeds from its ten-car raf­fle would go to­wards the con­struc­tion of the new head of­fice, which was to be a five-storey build­ing—which is stand­ing now.

PNM of­fi­cials in 2019 said that the struc­ture was ex­pect­ed to pro­vide of­fice space for par­ty op­er­a­tions but would al­so fea­ture rental spaces for the par­ty to gen­er­ate mon­ey. It was al­so re­port­ed then that the cur­rent Bal­isi­er House was to be re­fur­bished and used as a mu­se­um and archive li­brary.

The in­vi­ta­tions that were is­sued by the PNM last week for to­day’s re­open­ing of Bal­isi­er House showed pic­tures on­ly of the orig­i­nal head of­fice and not the new five-storey build­ing along­side.

Charles, who ques­tioned pro­cure­ment for the project, added, “It de­fies log­ic that in this gua­va sea­son, where every­body is catch­ing their ‘ne­nen’, any po­lit­i­cal par­ty can pri­ori­tise and raise an es­ti­mat­ed $150 mil­lion re­fur­bish­ment.

“Last Fri­day, Par­lia­ment passed leg­is­la­tion to as­suage Eu­ro­pean Union con­cerns about ben­e­fi­cial own­er­ship of as­sets in T&T. Who are the ben­e­fi­cial own­ers of Bal­isi­er House?”

—Gail Alexan­der