Renu­ka Singh

Em­bat­tled Sport Min­is­ter Anil Roberts re­ceived an­oth­er blow yes­ter­day as Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar an­nounced that she was re­mov­ing the con­tro­ver­sial mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar Life Sport pro­gramme from un­der his min­istry.Per­sad-Bisses­sar, speak­ing at the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship four-year an­niver­sary ral­ly at Mid Cen­tre Mall, Ch­agua­nas, first de­fend­ed Roberts, then dealt the new blow.Life Sport will know be placed un­der the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­istry.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would on­ly make a de­ci­sion on Roberts' po­lit­i­cal fu­ture with the par­ty af­ter care­ful­ly ex­am­in­ing the ex­ist­ing ev­i­dence."A de­ci­sion must be made in the na­tion­al in­ter­est, I will make it with­out fear and with­out favour," she said."But even as I am look­ing at this, I find it very, very strange, they say pass­ing strange that this was a video over a year and a half ago. The PNM was say­ing that they had this video and they talk­ing about it a year and a half ago.

"A year lat­er, one day be­fore a protest march that's in­tend­ed to shut down the coun­try, one day be­fore, the sto­ry comes up on your screens."Roberts is cur­rent­ly fac­ing pub­lic scruti­ny af­ter a video sur­faced which showed a man, look­ing and sound­ing like the min­is­ter, in the com­pa­ny of two women mak­ing what ap­peared to be a mar­i­jua­na cig­a­rette.Even af­ter com­ing out in de­fence of the video, how­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she would re­move the con­tro­ver­sial mul­ti­mil­lion-dol­lar Life Sport pro­gramme from un­der Roberts' min­istry.

Roberts is fac­ing ques­tions over mis­spending un­der the Life Sport pro­gramme and con­cerns that it is be­ing used to fund the crim­i­nal el­e­ment.Per­sad-Bisses­sar, speak­ing at the heav­i­ly-at­tend­ed event, bashed Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley and showed video clips of in­ter­views with for­mer Port-of-Spain may­or Louis Lee Sing and PNM mem­ber Dan­ny Mon­tano who both spoke dis­parag­ing­ly of Row­ley.

She said she had no plans of fol­low­ing in for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's foot­steps and would not be call­ing a snap elec­tion."He ex­pects an elec­tion soon­er rather than lat­er. Mr Row­ley, I serve no­tice on you tonight, if you think I fool­ish like the PNM to call an elec­tion be­fore time...I serve no­tice, I am not tak­ing any bas­ket, no elec­tion be­fore they are due. No bas­ket, none!"

She al­so played a clip of Row­ley him­self, where he de­scribed a group of fight­ing school girls as a "pack of hye­nas," say­ing that no one in her Gov­ern­ment would ever speak of stu­dents in those terms.

Speak­ing un­der the ban­ner Con­tin­u­ing the Road to Na­tion­al Re­cov­ery, Per­sad-Bisses­sar out­lined sev­er­al ac­com­plish­ments and said she was com­mit­ted to see­ing the high­way to Point Fortin con­struct­ed. She al­so high­light­ed in­creased ve­hi­cles for the po­lice ser­vice, CCTV cam­eras, and im­prove­ments to the health sec­tor, in­clud­ing longer open­ing hours at sev­er­al clin­ics.