PM extends stay in Tobago on husband’s request

Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar said yesterday she had decided to stay longer than scheduled in Tobago to fulfil a request from her husband Gregory. “I was supposed to leave Tobago this morning (Tuesday) for the debate (on the Tobago bill in the House of Parliament) but I got a text from my husband saying stay here and help Jack,” she said on Tuesday night.

She had journeyed to Speyside with her entourage for a political meeting in support of the Tobago Organisation of the People headed by Ashworth Jack, a coalition partner in the PP Government. It was her third night on the hustings in as many days. Persad-Bissessar began a hectic round of campaign activities in Tobago with Jack last Sunday in the run-up to next Monday’s THA election.

She told supporters that Tobago will be getting its own university campus soon. On Friday, Minister in the Ministry of Science, Technology and Tertiary Education Fazal Karim will open the Scarborough campus of the University of T&T. The measure is one in a package of goodies the central government has brought to the THA-run island in the run-up to the election.

It follows in recent days the opening of the islands’s first natural gas facility, a new gas station, the handing out of long overdue land deeds to residents, and the piloting of a Tobago self-government bill in Parliament yesterday. Persad-Bissessar’s main message to voters at public meetings in Tobago is they have nothing to fear from the PP Government, Trinidad or the United National Congress. Her reassurances are in response to speculation running through the island, allegedly being spread by the PNM, that “Indians want to take over Tobago.”

“They don’t want me in Tobago. But I will come again, before the election, during and after.” Responding to THA Chief Secretary Orville London’s claim that Tobago is too small for a university, the PM asked: “Why shouldn’t you have a university in Tobago?” She pointed out that the Government has opened a campus in Penal in Trinidad and observed: “Tobago students have to travel away from home and spend money to attend university in Trinidad.”

Yvonne Baboolal