Geisha Kow­lessar

The pro­posed rein­tro­duc­tion of the prop­er­ty tax to be an­nounced in to­day's bud­get is an in­di­ca­tion of how "de­cep­tive' the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment can be.Mak­ing the re­mark was Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley as he toured Lopinot yes­ter­day."I think fi­nal­ly the pop­u­la­tion will un­der­stand how de­cep­tive this gov­ern­ment can be," he said."I want to make the point that the Gov­ern­ment met a law in place and have tak­en an oath of of­fice to ob­serve the law."It is not the first time this Gov­ern­ment has tried to bring back what that they have con­demned."Say­ing the "bot­tom line" was that the PP Gov­ern­ment ran a cam­paign against prop­er­ty tax, Row­ley added that Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai was "not fool­ing any­one.""At the end of the tax, prop­er­ty own­ers will make a con­tri­bu­tion by pay­ing tax­es...It used to be called Land and Build­ing Tax­es," he said."What you are go­ing to end up with is the Gov­ern­ment try­ing to con­vince you that it is not that but it is re­al­ly that so let's wait and see what the min­is­ter says."

CNC3 News

In the mean­time, how­ev­er, the Op­po­si­tion Leader said, sig­nif­i­cant rev­enues have been lost dur­ing 2010 to 2013 from those who were "quite hap­py" to pay their land and build­ing tax­es."Prakash Ra­mad­har and the COP con­demned a tax which they are now seek­ing to re­pro­duce as some­thing dif­fer­ent...It's the same thing," he said."To own prop­er­ty you're re­quired to pay a tax based on the val­u­a­tion. The min­is­ter is now say­ing it is not that it is dif­fer­ent, it is that the last gov­ern­ment did not con­sult," Row­ley said.He said the Gov­ern­ment has now ac­cept­ed that it was wrong, un­rea­son­able and now look­ing for a way to bring back prop­er­ty tax "with­out los­ing po­lit­i­cal face."On bud­get ex­pec­ta­tions, Row­ley said he ex­pect­ed the Gov­ern­ment to con­tin­ue to be "ir­re­spon­si­ble" which it had been do­ing in the past."I ex­pect the Gov­ern­ment to do what it has been do­ing for the last three years which is to act as ir­re­spon­si­ble as pos­si­ble," he said."They be­lieve they could please every­body by giv­ing them what they want, even though by giv­ing what they want you will not, in fact, im­prove their sit­u­a­tion."

He added what the coun­try had lost in the last few years was the con­fi­dence to go for­ward and con­fi­dence to ini­ti­ate."And against that you had a gov­ern­ment that vir­tu­al­ly stopped every­thing that was go­ing on in the coun­try," Row­ley said."The prop­er­ty tax was symp­to­matic of every­thing else. It was not just the prop­er­ty tax that they had gone against. They went against in­dus­tri­al­i­sa­tion, the rev­enue au­thor­i­ty...every­thing that the pre­vi­ous gov­ern­ment was do­ing, this gov­ern­ment con­demned."He al­so ac­cused the Gov­ern­ment of "play­ing around for three years" and was now try­ing to find "some­thing to do to make them­selves use­ful."

Can­di­dates in­tro­duced

Dur­ing yes­ter­day's walk, Row­ley al­so in­tro­duced two of the PNM's can­di­dates who would be con­test­ing Oc­to­ber's lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tions.Twen­ty-five year old To­va Lin Bartholomew, who has a bach­e­lor of sci­ence de­gree in po­lit­i­cal sci­ence from the Uni­ver­si­ty of the West In­dies, St Au­gus­tine, de­scribed her­self as an "ad­mir­er of pol­i­tics" and one who en­joyed com­mu­ni­ty work."Look­ing at the cur­rent po­lit­i­cal land­scape there is a deep de­sire for a new re­fresh­ment to the pol­i­tics in T&T...This is prob­a­bly my biggest chal­lenge but I know I'm ca­pa­ble," she said.Bartholomew would be con­test­ing the Five Rivers/Lopinot dis­trict.Judy Gar­nar, who would be go­ing up for the La Flu­o­res­cent/Clever dis­trict, said the com­mu­ni­ty ap­proached her to rep­re­sent them.If elect­ed, she said, one area to be im­me­di­ate­ly tack­led was in­fra­struc­ture.