Gail Alexan­der

The late prime min­is­ter Dr Er­ic Williams would not have dis­charged him­self and walked out of hos­pi­tal if he had fall­en ill in Bar­ba­dos, says PNM Sen­a­tor Fitzger­ald Hinds. Hinds said so dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion yes­ter­day to Sen­ate de­bate on an In­de­pen­dent mo­tion seek­ing state-fund­ed arrange­ments to recog­nise the con­tri­bu­tions of all who served as prime min­is­ters and pres­i­dents.

Hinds said the PNM had last year called on Gov­ern­ment to ho­n­our Williams and Gov­ern­ment had "de­cep­tive­ly" said that in the 2012 Gold­en Ju­bilee cel­e­bra­tions it would take the ac­tion the PNM had pro­posed. But, he said, noth­ing had been done so far.

Hinds said Williams, if hos­pi­talised in Bar­ba­dos, as the Prime Min­is­ter was re­cent­ly, would have been mind­ful of the Bar­ba­di­an peo­ple and of pro­to­col and would not have left hos­pi­tal, be­cause it would have made the Bar­ba­di­an au­thor­i­ties feel a cer­tain way. He said Williams had recog­nised the im­por­tance of re­gion­al in­te­gra­tion and sen­si­tiv­i­ties that had to guide them.

Nor would Williams have ap­point­ed a min­is­ter to his Cab­i­net who is un­der a cloud of ques­tions lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly as the PP has done, Hinds said. He said it was no won­der MSJ leader David Ab­du­lah took his re­cent po­si­tion on the PP.

Not­ing Ab­du­lah was at the cen­tre of na­tion­al at­ten­tion, Hinds said Ab­du­lah was a "think­ing" man and a "sober" man. He said Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship mem­bers couldn't chal­lenge what Ab­du­lah had said "about greed, nepo­tism and cor­rup­tion." He cit­ed PP prob­lems in­clud­ing "fight­ing" for spoils, who should be may­or here or there and who should be on which state board or not."

Hinds added, "What is hap­pen­ing is that this so-called coali­tion...the in­ter­nal bac­cha­nal and com­bus­tion is af­fect­ing the gov­er­nance of T&T, as they're spend­ing all their time and all their en­er­gy and in­tel­lect deal­ing with the prob­lems of the coali­tion and sac­ri­fic­ing the gov­er­nance of T&T."

Hinds said it ap­peared the cen­tre of the PP Gov­ern­ment isn't hold­ing. He said Gov­ern­ment was short on cel­e­bra­tion for its sec­ond an­niver­sary since peo­ple were of the view the PP was in of­fice for it­self, its friends and fam­i­ly. "Peo­ple have lost re­spect for the Gov­ern­ment and now I see you're be­gin­ning to lose re­spect for your­selves," he added.

He said the Trans­port Min­is­ter had made a name for him­self as hav­ing sec­tar­i­an rather than na­tion­al con­cerns and the Works Min­is­ter was un­der a cloud of ques­tions lo­cal­ly, re­gion­al­ly and in­ter­na­tion­al­ly, yet was put on the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil.

Ac­cus­ing Gov­ern­ment of earn­ing a rep­u­ta­tion of be­ing "out and out dis­hon­est," Hinds said he didn't trust it, as he found the PP "in­con­sis­tent and eco­nom­i­cal with the truth." He said Gov­ern­ment's move to shift sev­er­al min­istries from Port-of-Spain would af­fect food and oth­er busi­ness­es around those min­istries. "The PP is now clos­ing down the coun­try," he added.