Ani­ka Gumbs-San­di­ford

The Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ)-one of the five po­lit­i­cal par­ties that came to­geth­er to form the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship-has de­cid­ed to blank the coali­tion's sec­ond an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion on Thurs­day. Par­ty in­sid­ers told Sun­day Guardian that the MSJ has opt­ed to stay out of the cel­e­bra­tion based on the gov­ern­ment's fail­ure to deal with im­por­tant is­sues af­fect­ing T&T.

"It's of­fi­cial-the MSJ would not be at­tend­ing the ral­ly," the par­ty in­sid­er re­vealed. Sun­day Guardian learnt that the par­ty's ex­ec­u­tive and ac­tivists are ex­pect­ed to meet in an emer­gency meet­ing to­day to fi­nalise its an­nounce­ment to be made to the na­tion on Mon­day.

When con­tact­ed yes­ter­day the par­ty's po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah did not de­ny or con­firm that the MSJ had tak­en a de­ci­sion to dis­tance them­selves from the ral­ly. "We would make a state­ment at the ap­pro­pri­ate time," Ab­du­lah said. Asked if he had re­neged on his com­mit­ment to speak at the ral­ly sched­uled to take place at Mid Cen­tre Mall, Ch­agua­nas, a plain-speak­ing Ab­du­lah said: "I nev­er gave any com­mit­ment to speak at the ral­ly. I have no idea what Mr Su­ruj Ram­bachan is speak­ing about. I nev­er told any­one I was go­ing to speak at that ral­ly."

The MSJ leader has crit­i­cised the cel­e­bra­tion say­ing the tim­ing was in­ap­pro­pri­ate. The par­ty hint­ed at its ab­sence from the ral­ly last week, af­ter it took is­sue over a full-page ad­ver­tise­ment high­light­ing the five lead­ers of the coali­tion that were ex­pect­ed to ad­dress sup­port­ers.

Say­ing that he gave no con­fir­ma­tion to at­tend the event, Ab­du­lah called for his im­age to be re­moved from the ad­ver­tise­ment. The par­ty's pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Gre­go­ry Fer­nan­dez yes­ter­day said that mes­sages have been for­ward­ed to Ross Ad­ver­tis­ing re­quest­ing the re­moval of Ab­du­lah's im­age from the ad­ver­tise­ment.

"Mr Ab­du­lah had con­veyed at the last meet­ing of the lead­ers that he was not in favour of the ral­ly. His mes­sage was very clear. I do not know who or where Mr Ram­bachan got his in­for­ma­tion from but it cer­tain­ly was not from the MSJ," Fer­nan­dez said.

Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day Oil­field Work­ers' Trade Union leader An­cel Ro­get on­ly said, "We are very con­fi­dent that the par­ty (MSJ) would do the right thing and when that is done we would make our state­ment at the right mo­ment." Ro­get had giv­en the MSJ up un­til May 24 to pull out of the PP on the ba­sis that cit­i­zens were be­ing ne­glect­ed.

Row­ley: PP one-term govt

"They are all a bunch of jok­ers. The on­ly thing about it is they don't know what shame is." That's how Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley yes­ter­day re­spond­ed to po­lit­i­cal leader of the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice David Ab­du­lah's stance not to par­tic­i­pate in the sec­ond an­niver­sary cel­e­bra­tion of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship (PP) gov­ern­ment on Thurs­day.

Row­ley said if "they had shame they would not por­tray them­selves as an em­bar­rass­ment to the peo­ple of T&T. They are all mouthing one mantra that coali­tion is here to stay." He said while coali­tions have worked around the world, in T&T it is "kan­gatang and ra-ra."

At the end of the term, Row­ley said, "the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go will fire you and elect a gov­ern­ment that gives us good or­der and good gov­er­nance..." Row­ley said the PNM was prepar­ing for gov­ern­ment.-Shal­iza Has­sanali