Yvonne Webb

Weeks af­ter Ger­ard Yet­ming was fired as chair­man of Cli­co and months af­ter Tim­o­thy Hamel-Smith was re­moved as Sen­ate pres­i­dent, both were on a UNC plat­form with Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar in Debe, south Trinidad on Tues­day night.Yet­ming, who was dis­missed over the con­tro­ver­sial pay­ment of more than $36 mil­lion to for­mer di­rec­tors of the com­pa­ny, dis­missed that in­ci­dent as a "some­thing mi­nor that is not some­thing for me to take on se­ri­ous­ly."

Al­though he joked about how easy it was to get a seat, hav­ing ar­rived with the PM in the packed au­di­to­ri­um and had chairs re­served for them, Yet­ming said he had no in­ten­tion of con­test­ing a seat for the par­ty in the Sep­tem­ber 7 gen­er­al elec­tion.He said his pres­ence had to do with show­ing sup­port and love for the PM whom he had known for over 25 years and who had been un­der ter­ri­ble at­tack in the past months from her for­mer Cab­i­net min­is­ter, Jack Warn­er.

Say­ing his pres­ence will not be lim­it­ed to Tues­day night's ap­pear­ance in Debe, Yet­ming al­so said he ex­pect­ed the PP to re­turn to gov­ern­ment."I would sup­port the PM and I sup­port the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship re­turn­ing to gov­ern­ment... what ever role that I may have to play but cer­tain­ly not as a con­tes­tant."

How­ev­er, the for­mer fi­nance min­is­ter said as politi­cians one could nev­er rule out re­turn­ing to ac­tive pol­i­tics.Hamel-Smith said his ap­pear­ance at the mo­bil­i­sa­tion meet­ing of the Oropouche East con­stituen­cy was ac­ci­den­tial as he was in the area and was in­vit­ed to the meet­ing by the Prime Min­is­ter.

He said there was a time when one had to stand up and be count­ed but he was un­der no il­lu­sion he would be in­vit­ed to con­test a seat. Point­ing out that once a politi­cian al­ways a politi­cian, he said he still had a lot of life in him and if he was giv­en the op­por­tu­ni­ty to con­tribute to the coun­try, he would cer­tain­ly wel­come such a ges­ture but get­ting in­volved in ac­tive pol­i­tics was not on his agen­da at this time.