Kevon Felmine

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has been award­ed a "badge of shame" by mem­bers of the High­way Re-route Move­ment (HRM), which yes­ter­day hung a tyre with a red piece of cloth on the front gate of her home at Philip­pine.About 20 pro­test­ers marched to Per­sad-Bisses­sar's home on the SS Erin Road to present her with the "sym­bol­ic award", al­though she is at­tend­ing a Com­mu­ni­ty of Latin Amer­i­can and Caribbean States (CELAC) sum­mit in Ha­vana, Cu­ba.

Lead­ing the pro­test­ers, HRM leader Dr Wayne Kublals­ingh said the PM was guilty of mis­con­duct in pub­lic of­fice by not ad­her­ing to the Arm­strong Re­port which called for fur­ther stud­ies to be done on the Oropouche La­goon.The ac­tion came three days af­ter Brazil­ian con­trac­tor Con­stru­to­ra OAS moved on­to the dis­put­ed Debe to Mon De­sir leg of the $7.2 bil­lion San Fer­nan­do to Point Fortin High­way.

Kublals­ingh al­so called on mem­bers of the pub­lic to present "badges of shame" if they al­so felt Gov­ern­ment was guilty of mis­con­duct in pub­lic of­fice.He said: "We have moved in­to a dif­fer­ent phase of the strug­gle. We have moved in­to a phase of tyre diplo­ma­cy. If it is tyre they want, we'll give them tyre."We are not go­ing to burn tyres and we are not go­ing to burn down ma­chines. We are us­ing peace­ful, diplo­mat­ic and sym­bol­ic ac­tion and any time you mis­be­have in pub­lic of­fice, we are go­ing to give you a tyre.

"I ap­peal to the peo­ple, if you feel your Gov­ern­ment is mis­be­hav­ing in pub­lic of­fice, send them a tyre on their gates, out­side their yards or out­side their com­pounds."The group said next in line for the tyre awards were Works and In­fra­struc­ture Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai and Nid­co pres­i­dent Dr Car­son Charles.Al­though Per­sad-Bisses­sar's home is heav­i­ly guard­ed, no se­cu­ri­ty per­son­nel came out to stop the group from putting the tyre on the gate and the po­lice did not turn up at the house.

Up to 30 min­utes af­ter the pro­test­ers left, sol­diers were seen walk­ing around their sta­tion mak­ing phone calls. Even­tu­al­ly they came to the gate and re­moved the tyre, which rolled down the dri­ve­way be­fore crash­ing in­to a plant pot.The gath­er­ing at­tract­ed spec­ta­tors, with one on­look­er ask­ing: "They work­ing obeah?" on see­ing the red cloth. One dri­ver got out of his car to chase the pro­test­ers on­ly to be mocked and laughed at.

Be­fore the demon­stra­tion, the pro­test­ers spent the morn­ing in Gand­hi Vil­lage where ex­ca­va­tors had grad­ed close to a kilo­me­tre of land in­to the area.Kublals­ingh said de­spite the move­ment's case be­ing heard in court in Port-of-Spain, Gov­ern­ment was con­tin­u­ing the work.He ac­cused the State of de­lay­ing the start of the court mat­ter by con­tin­u­al­ly ask­ing the pre­sid­ing judge, James Aboud, to re­cuse him­self. Aboud ruled two weeks ago that he would not do so.

The State had made an ap­pli­ca­tion for him to step aside from the case on the ba­sis of ap­par­ent bias af­ter his broth­er, en­vi­ron­men­tal­ist Gary Aboud, was ar­rest­ed at the Port-of-Spain wa­ter­front dur­ing protests by the fish­ing com­mu­ni­ty

Grif­fith calls for probe

In a state­ment last night, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the Na­tion­al Op­er­a­tions Cen­tre (NOC), Garvin Heer­ah, said Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Gary Grif­fith had called for an im­me­di­ate re­port on the in­ci­dent, not­ing it was a breach of se­cu­ri­ty at the PM's res­i­dence."This in­ci­dent has ig­nit­ed a cause for con­cern. The Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty has de­mand­ed an of­fi­cial re­port im­me­di­ate­ly to iden­ti­fy the rea­sons be­hind this breach, who would be held re­spon­si­ble and to en­sure that there would not be a re­peat of this breach."

He, how­ev­er, com­mend­ed the po­lice, un­der In­sp De­bulet, for their quick re­sponse to the scene and pro­fes­sion­al ap­proach in deal­ing with the mat­ter."The NOC was in con­stant mon­i­tor­ing and co­or­di­na­tion of the re­sponse via the TTPS lia­sion at­tached at the NOC. The Min­is­ter has al­so di­rect­ed a thor­ough in­ves­ti­ga­tion be car­ried out to as­cer­tain who might have been in­volved and re­spon­si­ble for this in­ci­dent," Heer­ah said.