PNM to use Tobago strategy in Trinidad (with CNC3 video)

The Opposition PNM is starting a programme to “clean up” the voters’ list in Trinidad for upcoming local government elections. The party will be using the strategies employed in its recent successful Tobago House of Assembly campaign, PNM MP Colm Imbert said on Tuesday night. “That’s how we were successful in Tobago. Is Trinidad time now,” Imbert said, addressing a PNM meeting at St Augustine. It began the Opposition’s public outreach to prepare for local government polls, due by July.

Imbert said PNM had got Tobagonians to come out to register to vote and the voters’ list was cleaned up. He said the PNM was also successful with the initiative in 2000. “And we’re going at it again. Once you do that the PNM will come marching home.” Imbert said illegal guns were coming into T&T along with drugs and while the drugs move on to their ultimate destination overseas, the guns, often a  lagniappe in the transaction, remained in T&T. 

PNM meet in St Augustine

However, Imbert said, Government dismantled all the security apparatus, including cancelling the proposed offshore patrol vessels, yet the Prime Minister at the recent Caricom inter-sessional meeting in Haiti, said she wanted to have an “Atlantic wall of security.” Imbert said the Government could not do anything on the crime issue in the last couple years in office since the time for implementing plans was in the earlier part of a term.  

Imbert and PNM senator Terrence Deyalsingh accused Government of trying to muzzle the media by invoking the clauses of the Telecommunications Act to get free airtime. Deyalsingh claimed there was a “clandestine nexus between the PP leadership and people who have free rein and access to the Cabinet.” He urged people to join the “PNM Ark.”