Sascha?Wil­son

Some­one who looked a lot like out­go­ing US Pres­i­dent Barack Oba­ma made a sur­prise ap­pear­ance at the open­ing of the $150 mil­lion New York-themed Movi­eTowne cine­plex in San Fer­nan­do on Mon­day night. Just be­fore his dra­mat­ic ar­rival, a news bul­letin flashed across a screen an­nounc­ing that Oba­ma was a sur­prise vis­it to T&T. Then mas­ter of cer­e­monies Natasha Jones an­nounced a spe­cial guest.

Sur­round­ed by body­guards, famed Oba­ma im­per­son­ator Reg­gie Brown made his way to the podi­um, smil­ing and wav­ing at guest.

In re­marks at the event at C3 Cen­tre, Corinth Road, Brown had the au­di­ence laugh­ing as he apol­o­gised for the ab­sence of his wife, Michelle, and took jabs at pres­i­dent-elect Don­ald Trump.

"What Derek had planned here trumps any­thing," he said, "I hate that word trump."

Brown, who has for the past eight years been trav­el­ing around the world im­per­son­at­ing Oba­ma, com­mend­ed chair­man Derek Chin and his team on the de­sign of the cine­plex.

He said: "When I ar­rived here at Movi­eTowne I thought I was in New York."

Chin said the cine­plex had been in the mak­ing for the past three years and be­came a re­al­i­ty through the col­lab­o­rat­ed ef­fort, hard work, de­ter­mi­na­tion and the sup­port of fam­i­ly, col­leagues and staff.

Com­ment­ing on how is team had worked on the project, Chin said: "They re­al­ly showed what we can do if we put our minds to­geth­er. I hope this is a mes­sage to the coun­try and both par­ties, to get our gov­ern­ment mov­ing in the right di­rec­tion.

"We have to re­mem­ber this is our coun­try. If we bad talk it and break it down and mash it up who is go­ing to suf­fer? Not us? So we must help to en­dorse the young peo­ple, let them un­der­stand there is a dif­fer­ent mind­set."

The event was at­tend­ed by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi, Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein, Hous­ing Min­is­ter Ran­dal Mitchell and Trade Min­is­ter Paula Gopee-Scoon, as well as Op­po­si­tion MPs David Lee, Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, Bhoe Tewarie and Dr Tim Gopeesingh.

The three storey en­ter­tain­ment cen­tre has nine screens, in­clud­ing two su­per screens, as well as bars and restau­rants. The new cine­plex is in ad­di­tion to Movi­eTowne en­ter­tain­ment cen­tres al­ready op­er­at­ing in Port-of-Spain, Ch­agua­nas and To­ba­go.

Chin did not say when the cine­plex will be­gin op­er­at­ing but in­di­cat­ed that he need­ed about two more months to put fin­ish­ing touch­es on the build­ing.