Gail Alexan­der

The Op­po­si­tion PNM will be propos­ing an amend­ment to the An­ti-Gang law to al­low for the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tion's in­ter­ven­tion be­fore any cit­i­zen is charged un­der that law.Op­po­si­tion Leader Kei­th Row­ley re­vealed this yes­ter­day in his re­ply to Gov­ern­ment's 2011-2012 bud­get in which the na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty se­cured the largest al­lo­ca­tion-$4 bil­lion-of the $54 bil­lion pack­age.Row­ley's Bud­get re­ply yes­ter­day at the sec­ond par­lia­men­tary sit­ting at the new Wa­ter­front Par­lia­ment lo­ca­tion, was de­layed by 80 min­utes due to tech­ni­cal dif­fi­cul­ties.When he even­tu­al­ly be­gan speak­ing at 11.27 am, Row­ley, slam­ming the 2012 Bud­get, said: "The bud­get speech de­liv­ered by the Fi­nance Min­is­ter was an elab­o­rate ex­er­cise in ob­fus­ca­tion, self-praise and de­ceit."At times the speech bor­dered on delu­sion­al, or was of such ex­treme vague­ness that one had to strug­gle to fol­low ex­act­ly what the min­is­ter was re­al­ly say­ing."The on­ly growth that has tak­en place is with­in the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al's de­part­ment, where $94.5 mil­lion is be­ing al­lo­cat­ed for pay­ing le­gal fees," Row­ley added.

He said the bud­get held noth­ing new, or any­thing that had not been pre­vi­ous­ly im­ple­ment­ed, in re­sponse to crime. Though stat­ing that the cur­rent state of emer­gency "has in­deed brought some per­ceived and tem­po­rary ben­e­fits, in the view of the more care­ful ob­serv­er," Row­ley added: "It is still our view, how­ev­er, that there is noth­ing that was achieved dur­ing the state of emer­gency which was not nor­mal po­lice work."He said an­oth­er ben­e­fit of the emer­gency was the over­all re­duc­tion in se­ri­ous crim­i­nal ac­tiv­i­ty."How­ev­er, it would be fool­ish and short-sight­ed to think that this de­vel­op­ment would be sus­tained, if we do not put sus­tain­able, mean­ing­ful mea­sures in place, in or­der to con­vert this tem­po­rary ben­e­fit to a more long-term trend."We have spent over an ex­tra $100 mil­lion in the last six weeks on ex­tra polic­ing. The ques­tion is, was this the best way to po­lice the coun­try at that and oth­er cost?"De­scrib­ing the an­ti-gang law as "very de­lib­er­ate­ly dra­con­ian leg­is­la­tion," Row­ley said the state did not have to put the en­tire so­ci­ety on pause to pro­tect cit­i­zens.

He added: "It has nev­er been our un­der­stand­ing that cit­i­zens, whether law-abid­ing, law-break­er or out­right crim­i­nal, should be picked up with­out ev­i­dence and in so do­ing, be de­nied of the usu­al pro­tec­tions of the law."He said Gov­ern­ment botched the emer­gency and in some cas­es, in­no­cent per­sons may have been ar­rest­ed; crim­i­nals may have been set free and con­fi­dence would have been lost in the Po­lice Ser­vice.Row­ley said when the full ef­fects of the emer­gency were ful­ly fac­tored in­to the end of the fourth-quar­ter, the re­al de­cline could be well above two per cent.Say­ing Gov­ern­ment had pre­sent­ed the largest bud­get in T&T's his­to­ry, Row­ley added:"But this is with­out iden­ti­fy­ing any clear rev­enue gen­er­at­ing ac­tiv­i­ties oth­er than in­creas­ing fines for cer­tain of­fences."The min­is­ter is con­grat­u­lat­ing him­self for plan­ning to run huge bud­get deficits with­out ar­tic­u­lat­ing any plan as to how he will raise rev­enue in the fu­ture and when will he re­turn to a bal­anced bud­get. The dis­as­trous out­come of this should be clear."

Row­ley said: "In­deed the ap­proach set out in the bud­get is akin to the en­counter in 'Al­ice in Won­der­land' be­tween the Al­ice and the Cheshire cat."When she asks for di­rec­tions, the cat replies: 'If you don't know where you are go­ing then any road will take you there'," Row­ley added. He said: "This group of 29 is lead­ing us over a cliff whilst pre­tend­ing it is a trip to the promised land."This UNC Gov­ern­ment has presided over tak­ing the coun­try from weak pos­i­tive eco­nom­ic growth in­to a re­ces­sion: Ris­ing un­em­ploy­ment; in­creased na­tion­al debt and de­stroyed any sem­blance of busi­ness con­fi­dence."Row­ley raised ques­tions about Gov­ern­ment's promised $3,000 NIS pen­sion.He asked whether that was sus­tain­able in an ag­ing pop­u­la­tion and at what cost to cur­rent and fu­ture con­trib­u­tors to the scheme.Row­ley ex­pressed con­cern that Gov­ern­ment may dip in­to the Her­itage Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund for ex­pen­di­ture.He said Gov­ern­ment had paint­ed it­self in­to a po­lit­i­cal cor­ner with the prop­er­ty tax and cit­i­zens must now mon­i­tor that mat­ter close­ly to en­sure that retroac­tive tax leg­is­la­tion was not en­act­ed.

He said Gov­ern­ment's rev­enue tar­gets, in­clud­ing from VAT, which has de­clined, would like­ly not be col­lect­ed and were "smoke and mir­rors."He said Gov­ern­ment's fail­ure to pay con­trac­tors was con­tin­u­ing to have a crip­pling ef­fect on the econ­o­my.The de­cline of the en­er­gy sec­tor un­der the PP, he added, was a "na­tion­al dis­as­ter in the mak­ing."Row­ley said the Op­po­si­tion was mon­i­tor­ing Gov­ern­ment's planned In­vaders Bay de­vel­op­ment, since there had been re­ports that a de­vel­op­er had pro­cured $2 mil­lion in de­vel­op­ment plans for this prop­er­ty and 19 min­is­ters had favoured it.He said: "It was not long af­ter this the Plan­ning Min­istry is­sued a re­quest for pro­pos­als from ex­pe­ri­enced de­vel­op­ers. We await the fi­nal out­come of this one. The last time a UNC min­is­ter 'gave' the fore­shore to a favoured de­vel­op­er, who al­so spent $2 mil­lion prepar­ing a plan for de­vel­op­ment, a PNM Gov­ern­ment stopped it."