Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley says he is not ex­pect­ing any­thing of great sig­nif­i­cance in the 2012 na­tion­al bud­get to be pre­sent­ed by Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an next Mon­day. Re­spond­ing to ques­tions at his Charles Street, Port-of-Spain, of­fice yes­ter­day, Row­ley said: "The out­come of the 2011 bud­get has failed. The Gov­ern­ment has not demon­strat­ed any abil­i­ty to gen­er­ate rev­enue." He pre­dict­ed that the fis­cal pack­age would be "an­oth­er deficit bud­get. That be­ing so the coun­try's con­cern should be the Gov­ern­ment's abil­i­ty to man­age rev­enues and ex­pen­di­tures," he said.

Re­spond­ing to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar's state­ment that the bud­get will con­tain some sur­pris­es, Row­ley said a bud­get was not sup­posed to be about sur­pris­es. "It should be the op­po­site. It should be as open as pos­si­ble. We are not chil­dren look­ing for Christ­mas sur­pris­es. That is the prob­lem with this Gov­ern­ment. A na­tion­al bud­get is not about sur­pris­es," he added. Mean­while, Row­ley said he wrote to the Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion (PSC) yes­ter­day, ques­tion­ing the "in­ac­tion" of Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er Dwayne Gibbs to in­ves­ti­gate a FI­FA mat­ter in­volv­ing pub­lic of­fi­cials in T&T.

Row­ley did not iden­ti­fy the spe­cif­ic mat­ter but in­di­cat­ed it re­lat­ed to an al­leged bribe by a for­mer FI­FA of­fi­cial in Port-of-Spain last year. He said in his let­ter he "ac­cused the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice of act­ing un­der po­lit­i­cal di­rec­tion on this mat­ter." He added: "We can on­ly come to the con­clu­sion that the rea­son for the Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice not act­ing on this mat­ter is be­cause of the per­sons in­volved in this mat­ter." He said the cit­i­zens of T&T would not tol­er­ate that de­vel­op­ment. He in­sist­ed that no­body was above the law in T&T and the mat­ter would not be al­lowed to be swept un­der the car­pet by those with in­ter­ests to pro­tect.

Row­ley said he was aware of T&T cit­i­zens who have giv­en writ­ten tes­ti­mo­ny to the in­ves­ti­gat­ing pri­vate sec­tor agen­cies as in­ves­ti­ga­tions take place out­side of T&T. He said the al­leged in­ci­dent was done in breach of the law in T&T. Row­ley said he want­ed the PSC to call on Gibbs to re­port what was the sta­tus of his in­ves­ti­ga­tion in­to the al­leged mat­ter.