Richard Lord

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has de­fend­ed In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors Gail Mer­hair and Michael An­nisette for vot­ing with the Gov­ern­ment to ex­tend the life of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment bod­ies by one year. Man­ning said this dur­ing last night's pub­lic meet­ing of the PNM at Wood­ford Square in Port-of-Spain.

There has been wide­spread crit­i­cism of Mer­hair, who said it was not the role of an In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tor to "thwart" Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion. Man­ning said no one was crit­i­cal of sev­en oth­er In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors for vot­ing against the leg­is­la­tion. "The fact of the mat­ter is that In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors are in­de­pen­dent–free to vote as they feel, as they see fit." Man­ning said: "Any at­tempt to or­gan­ise In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors to vote along any par­tic­u­lar line is con­trary to the spir­it of the Con­sti­tu­tion. "I say it again, In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors are in­de­pen­dent of the Gov­ern­ment, the Op­po­si­tion and in­de­pen­dent of the Pres­i­dent, who ap­point­ed them, "In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors are in­de­pen­dent of each oth­er."

PM shreds Je­re­mie's let­ter

Man­ning said no­body must tell In­de­pen­dent Sen­a­tors how to vote.

He al­so stat­ed that he re­ject­ed the of­fer of res­ig­na­tion by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al John Je­re­mie, fol­low­ing last month's pas­sage of a no-con­fi­dence mo­tion in him by the Law As­so­ci­a­tion. Man­ning said he shred­ded Je­re­mie's res­ig­na­tion let­ter. Man­ning en­dorsed a claim by for­mer PNM min­is­ter Overand Pad­more, who said re­cent­ly that if this coun­try did not have strong and de­ter­mined lead­er­ship, it would be un­govern­able.

He said if there was not strong and de­ter­mined lead­er­ship in this coun­try, "they would eat you like pan salmon." Man­ning said the role of the me­dia was to ed­u­cate and in­form. He was not sure the me­dia here was per­form­ing its prop­er role. He said the PNM would not lose at the polls again un­der his lead­er­ship. "It ain't go­ing to hap­pen again." He stressed the need to re­form Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment in Trinidad. Man­ning said the Rev­enue Au­thor­i­ty–a merg­er of In­land Rev­enue and Cus­toms and Ex­cise–will take place in 2010. Ear­li­er in an in­ter­view, In­for­ma­tion Min­is­ter Neil Parsan­lal said the meet­ing was or­gan­ised at the birth­place of the PNM to ed­u­cate the pop­u­la­tion. He said it was not about elec­tion or elec­tion gim­mick­ry.