Gail Alexan­der

Fi­nance Min­is­ter Win­ston Dook­er­an has suf­fered "UNC-fi­ca­tion" in which good peo­ple adopt UNC pos­tur­ing and turn bad, says PNM Sen­a­tor Ter­rence Deyals­ingh. Deyals­ingh in­di­cat­ed this yes­ter­day dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2012 bud­get de­bate at the Wa­ter­front Par­lia­ment lo­ca­tion. Deyals­ingh sug­gest­ed that the pic­ture of late NAR MP Leo Des Vi­gnes, who died af­ter be­ing shot dur­ing the 1990 coup at­tempt, be placed in the new Par­lia­ment to re­mind "us of what we stand for and what we over­came on Ju­ly 27, 1990," he said. Deyals­ingh said the UNC-fi­ca­tion "dis­ease" had not yet caught Min­is­ters Dr Bhoe Tewarie and Vas­ant Bharath. He said Tewarie was an ho­n­ourable man.

"I hope Dr Tewarie does not fall prey to this," Deyals­ingh added. Tewarie rose to say he was hap­py to be part of the PP Gov­ern­ment of which the UNC was a part. Deyals­ingh said the PP was a fig­ment of the imag­i­na­tion. Deyals­ingh said Dook­er­an's re­cent de­scrip­tions of the lo­cal econ­o­my un­der the PNM had made it look like T&T was an "eco­nom­ic bas­ket case." He said he thought Dook­er­an's 1990 coup ex­pe­ri­ence would have made him more pa­tri­ot­ic. Dis­put­ing Dook­er­an's growth pro­jec­tions, Deyals­ingh ex­pressed con­cern about the deficit bud­get, say­ing the IMF has warned re­gion­al and oth­er states to be care­ful of deficit fi­nanc­ing.

Deyals­ingh crit­i­cised En­er­gy Min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine say­ing that as En­er­gy Min­is­ter -han­dling the econ­o­my's piv­otal sec­tor- Ram­nar­ine should al­so have spo­ken in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives Bud­get de­bate since that was the su­pe­ri­or House. "He need­ed to talk to the peo­ple who rep­re­sent the peo­ple -in the Low­er House. We rep­re­sent no­body, no­body vot­ed for us," Deyals­ingh added. Prais­ing the NAR, UNC and past PNM ad­min­is­tra­tions for main­tain­ing en­er­gy con­tracts, Deyals­ingh said T&T had nev­er been known to flip-flop on en­er­gy pol­i­cy un­til now with the PP. Deyals­ingh called for an­swers on en­er­gy projects in­clud­ing the Venezue­lan gas field ini­tia­tive start­ed un­der for­mer PP En­er­gy Min­is­ter Car­olyn Seep­er­sad-Bachan. He said there had been no word on it since she was re­moved. Deyals­ingh de­liv­ered his first bud­get con­tri­bu­tion as a PNM sen­a­tor be­decked in an In­di­an kur­ta out­fit.

GA