Rhon­da Krys­tal Ram­bal­ly

The coun­try is head­ing down a slip­pery slope to be­com­ing a ba­nana re­pub­lic. So said chair­man of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) Franklin Khan at yes­ter­day's me­dia con­fer­ence fol­low­ing its gen­er­al coun­cil meet­ing at Bal­isi­er House, Port-of-Spain. He said the gen­er­al coun­cil was "to­tal­ly ab­sorbed" by the hap­pen­ings over the last few days about Sec­tion 34 of the Ad­min­is­tra­tion of Jus­tice (In­dictable Pro­ceed­ings) Act 2011.

Khan said the PNM would not sit idly by and "let this thing blow over." The gen­er­al coun­cil adopt­ed sev­er­al res­o­lu­tions, one of which was a call for the im­me­di­ate res­ig­na­tions of Jus­tice Min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney and At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan. Khan said po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley will to­day give the par­ty's re­sponse "to this sor­did af­fair" at a meet­ing in Point Cumana, Diego Mar­tin.

"When we take this sor­did af­fair and stack it up against the crime rate in the coun­try...you stack it up against our drop­ping in the com­pet­i­tive­ness in­dex in the Unit­ed Na­tions and more im­por­tant­ly, our con­tin­u­ous de­cline in terms of the cor­rup­tion per­cep­tion in­dex, ladies and gen­tle­men, un­der the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment, Trinidad is fast be­com­ing a ba­nana re­pub­lic."

Mean­while, PNM?pub­lic re­la­tions of­fi­cer Faris Al-Rawi said there were ab­solute­ly no ex­pla­na­tions about the con­tro­ver­sial Sec­tion 34 by any gov­ern­ment mem­ber in the Up­per and Low­er Hous­es. He said the on­ly peo­ple who spoke in the Sen­ate dur­ing the de­bate was Ram­lo­gan. "There are 15 peo­ple sit­ting op­po­site us and one per­son spoke. "That must say to you some­thing," he said.