?UNC Ca­roni East MP Dr Tim Gopeesingh swears that the Prop­er­ty Tax Bill, 2009 needs a three-fifths ma­jor­i­ty to pass be­cause it con­flicts with Sec­tion Four of the T&T Con­sti­tu­tion, guar­an­tee­ing the right to en­joy­ment of prop­er­ty. He stressed that the Gov­ern­ment was in­sist­ing that it on­ly need­ed a sim­ple ma­jor­i­ty for the bill to pass, but his dis­tin­guished le­gal col­leagues in the House, Ramesh Lawrence Ma­haraj and Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, would take the Gov­ern­ment to court, and win, if the leg­is­la­tion was rushed through Par­lia­ment, Gopeesingh de­clared. He said cit­i­zens al­ready pay too many tax­es for prop­er­ty to be eas­i­ly di­gest­ed and that was why a wide swathe of so­ci­ety was protest­ing against it, even to the ex­tent of mak­ing their pres­ence felt around the Red House, and be­ing bru­talised by the po­lice, for Fri­day's sit­ting of the Low­er House. Peo­ple in T&T are un­der pres­sure, bills com­ing and meet­ing bills and to be faced with prop­er­ty tax on top of that was too much to bear, Gopeesingh ar­gued.

Ear­li­er, Tourism Min­is­ter Joseph Ross had ar­gued that the Gov­ern­ment had spent its rev­enues wise­ly since as­sum­ing of­fice again in 2002, but Gopeesingh went in­to lurid de­tail to high­light his as­ser­tion that the cur­rent Gov­ern­ment was "squan­der­ma­nia" per­son­i­fied. Over 200,000 cit­i­zens were liv­ing on less than US $2 a day and he won­dered how they were sur­viv­ing. Gopeesingh read cor­re­spon­dence that had come to hand from the Chief Par­lia­men­tary Coun­sel ex­press­ing the fear that prop­er­ty tax would in­evitably spark an in­crease in WASA rates, fur­ther bur­den­ing the pop­u­lace with bills. PNM To­ba­go East MP, Labour Min­is­ter Ren­nie Du­mas, brought the spir­it of Christ­mas in­to the de­bate when he as­sert­ed that when Joseph and Mary jour­neyed to Beth­le­hem it was not to de­liv­er the in­fant Je­sus but to reg­is­ter to pay tax­es.

Ar­gu­ing a case for the re­vi­sion up­ward of prop­er­ty tax he said be­tween 1991 and 2009 the val­ue of prop­er­ties had risen by 250 per cent. The qual­i­ty of life and ex­pectan­cy in T&T had al­so in­creased tremen­dous­ly through Gov­ern­ment ac­tiv­i­ty so it was not ask­ing too much for seek an in­crease in prop­er­ty tax, de­clared Du­mas. He said the Val­i­da­tion of Land (Amend­ment) Bill, 2009 and Prop­er­ty Tax Bill were brought on to the Par­lia­ment's agen­da by the UNC in the late 1990s when a team from the Uni­ver­si­ty of Cam­bridge was in­vit­ed here to do a land re­form and prop­er­ty tax study. UNC Ma­yaro MP Win­ston "Gyp­sy" Pe­ters said the prop­er­ty tax would in­ter­fere with the cul­ture of the coun­try and damp­en the en­thu­si­asm of na­tion­als to own their home, a view shared by Gopeesingh. He said the peo­ple of T&T gained noth­ing from the re­cent en­er­gy wind­fall and he would be high­light­ing their plight in a 2010 ca­lyp­so called Mad­off. UNC Cu­mu­to Man­zanil­la MP Har­ry Par­tap pre­dict­ed his con­stituents in re­mote Four Roads, Tamana would move from pay­ing $69.40 a year in prop­er­ty tax to $972, even though their roads were lit­tle more than mud tracks and they had no ac­cess to pipeborne wa­ter.