Asha Javeed and Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says she's "ful­ly with­in the law" in her in­tent to re-op­er­a­tionalise a Prime Min­is­ter's Of­fice in To­ba­go. Ques­tioned whether the ben­e­fits of such an of­fice out­weighed any fall­out with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Per­sad-Bisses­sar said: "I am the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go. I will dis­charge my du­ties. I am the Prime Min­is­ter not just of Trinidad but of To­ba­go as well. That's my con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ty." Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke to re­porters af­ter she gave the fea­ture ad­dress at the open­ing of the Caribbean In­vest­ment Fo­rum (CIF) at the Hilton Trinidad, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day. Last Sat­ur­day, the Prime Min­is­ter an­nounced her in­tent at a pub­lic meet­ing at Old Mar­ket Square, Scar­bor­ough, her in­tent to re­open an of­fice in the sis­ter isle to cel­e­brate the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship coali­tion Gov­ern­ment's first year in of­fice.

The Gov­ern­ment's vis­it to To­ba­go last week al­so saw the open­ing of a CEPEP of­fice, a move which pro­voked the ire of Chief Sec­re­tary Orville Lon­don to pur­sue le­gal ac­tion against the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment. Per­sad Bisses­sar point­ed out that, as far as she had been ad­vised, there was al­ready an of­fice base for the Prime Min­is­ter "so it's not that I am es­tab­lish­ing one." Pushed to state what the Gov­ern­ment hoped to achieve that the THA was not be able to, she said: "There are Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment ser­vices which are not in the am­bit of the THA and we will be able to bring these ser­vices to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go." She dis­missed the sug­ges­tion the move would be able to help the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP), a mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment's five-par­ty coali­tion, wrest pow­er from the PNM-led THA.

She said: "I do my du­ty as the Prime Min­is­ter of T&T." Mean­while, TOP leader Ash­worth Jack says Per­sad-Bisses­sar is not dis­re­spect­ing the THA. He said yes­ter­day the is­sue be­ing mount­ed by the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment-con­trolled THA was a smoke­screen. "Of course not. She is not un­der­min­ing the THA," Jack added. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar was the Prime Min­is­ter of Trinidad and To­ba­go and could use her of­fice in To­ba­go as much as she liked.

Jack ac­cused Lon­don and oth­ers of rais­ing a red-her­ring about the au­thor­i­ty of the As­sem­bly be­ing un­der­mined by the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, which in­clud­ed Jack's TOP. He said there was need for CEPEP on the is­land as many peo­ple were still un­able to get em­ploy­ment un­der cur­rent CEPEP arrange­ments. He said the PNM-con­trolled both the Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment in Trinidad and the As­sem­bly in To­ba­go for eight con­sec­u­tive years and yet it failed to deal with the prob­lems af­fect­ing the is­land. He said there was need for Per­sad-Bisses­sar to do what she was at­tempt­ing to do for the peo­ple of the is­land. Lon­don, on the oth­er hand, said the Gov­ern­ment was clear­ly cam­paign­ing, hav­ing "done things in To­ba­go against the ba­sic tenets of good gov­er­nance in re­la­tion to the THA and Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment." But as far as Per­sad-Bisses­sar is aware, the move will not in­jure the re­la­tion­ship she now shares with Lon­don. "We have agreed that we will meet oc­ca­sion­al­ly on a reg­u­lar ba­sis," she said. Mean­while, the Prime Min­is­ter said there would be a Cab­i­net re-align­ment this month. "As we speak it has not been put off. I said in June, the month is not done yet," she said.