Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts has come out in de­fence of his col­league, Anand Ram­lo­gan, over the pur­chase of two Mar­aval prop­er­ties short­ly af­ter he as­sumed of­fice as the At­tor­ney Gen­er­al in 2010. Speak­ing to re­porters out­side the gates of the Prime Min­is­ter's pri­vate res­i­dence at Phillip­ine on Sun­day where a pre-bud­get meet­ing was held with par­ty loy­al­ists, Roberts said those who have crit­i­cised Ram­lo­gan must re­alise that he was a suc­cess­ful at­tor­ney be­fore he went in­to of­fice. He said: "It is a very in­ter­est­ing phe­nom­e­non... I think we must un­der­stand the PP has a lot of peo­ple who were suc­cess­ful be­fore pol­i­tics. "I am on­ly a min­is­ter for two-and-a- half years, but be­fore that I was quite suc­cess­ful on TV, ra­dio, news­pa­pers, coach­ing, restau­rant and I was al­so part of a le­gal firm that was quite suc­cess­ful. "The AG was al­so very suc­cess­ful so I would like to know why peo­ple talk­ing so. I re­cent­ly broke up with my long­time girl­friend and I might need to buy a house...right now I am liv­ing by my fa­ther. "I want the AG to ne­go­ti­ate for me be­cause to get a house for $1.75 mil­lion in Mar­aval is good ne­go­ti­a­tions."

Roberts com­mend­ed the Guardian for break­ing the sto­ry re­gard­ing Clause 34 of the In­dictable Of­fences Act. He said: "This al­lowed the Prime Min­is­ter to im­me­di­ate­ly re­call Par­lia­ment and deal with this sit­u­a­tion. "Then she con­duct­ed her de­tailed in­ves­ti­ga­tions which was very sen­si­tive and none of us in Cab­i­net was aware of what she was do­ing. "It in­volved dis­cus­sions and gath­er­ing in­for­ma­tion from the Chief Jus­tice and from the DPP as well as oth­er min­is­ters from the In­ter-Min­is­te­r­i­al Ju­di­cial Com­mit­tee." Roberts said by fir­ing for­mer jus­tice min­is­ter Her­bert Vol­ney, Per­sad-Bisses­sar showed she was ca­pa­ble of putting good gov­er­nance be­fore pol­i­tics. He al­so said there would be no ear­ly polls de­spite calls from the Op­po­si­tion. "There will be no polls un­til when­ev­er it is due, end of No­vem­ber or De­cem­ber 2015, so tell Row­ley to cool him­self be­cause Row­ley will not be fac­ing the polls as the leader of the PNM," Roberts said. He said peo­ple had more con­fi­dence in the Prime Min­is­ter since the Clause 34 fi­as­co. With re­gard to the 2012-13 bud­get, Roberts said more than 100 more sport­ing fa­cil­i­ties would be up­grad­ed through­out the coun­try. He said coach­es would be hired to train pupils in kinder­garten, pri­ma­ry and sec­ondary schools and that the aquat­ic cen­tre would be built in Cou­va, along with a cy­cling velo­drome.