The Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress has struck down claims made by Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley that it was be­ing ob­struc­tion­ist to pro­posed re­form of Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment leg­is­la­tion.

How­ev­er, two of the par­ty's se­nior mem­bers said there must be con­sti­tu­tion­al pro­tec­tion for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment as they ques­tioned and called for clar­i­fi­ca­tion on the role of the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­istry.

On the cam­paign trail, Row­ley ac­cused the UNC of im­ped­ing its de­ci­sion to in­tro­duce and pass leg­is­la­tion for the re­form even though he said, they have been sup­port­ive un­til now.

Now that the time has come for the leg­is­la­tion to be de­bat­ed, he said there were some in the UNC who are call­ing for con­sti­tu­tion­al changes and a spe­cial ma­jor­i­ty to sup­port it.

"I think Dr Row­ley, as Prime Min­is­ter, must have a lit­tle more re­spect for the sys­tem we have in T&T," Ca­roni Cen­tral MP Bhoe Tewarie said. He said un­der this sys­tem MPs in both par­ties were elect­ed to sit in Par­lia­ment by the peo­ple.

"We did not get here by guess. We have a con­sti­tu­tion­al du­ty in the Par­lia­ment and it is to say what we think and to say how we feel and it is to rep­re­sent the in­ter­est of the peo­ple whom we rep­re­sent and that is not ob­struc­tion­ist to de­clare our point of view.

"If it con­tra­dicts Dr Row­ley's point of view and if he would un­der­stand and ap­pre­ci­ate that, then I think he would have much greater col­lab­o­ra­tion in the Par­lia­ment, " Tewarie said.

As they pre­sent­ed their par­ty's Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment man­i­festo, four days be­fore elec­tions, UNC MP's Dr Su­ruj Ram­bachan, Tewarie and chair­man Dr David Lee all en­dorsed the re­form which they said was in line with what the PNM was of­fer­ing.

Tewarie said, how­ev­er, they had a prob­lem with the qual­i­ta­tive dif­fer­ence in their un­der­stand­ing of what Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form was, how it was to be trans­lat­ed in­to a Bill and leg­isla­tive draft­ing.

"The sec­ond is­sue we have, is the role of the Min­istry of Rur­al De­vel­op­ment. The Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­istry was abol­ished. Many of the Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cor­po­ra­tions in this coun­try cov­er rur­al ar­eas and if you are go­ing to have greater pow­er, greater de­cen­tral­i­sa­tion and greater au­ton­o­my for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment, then what is the role of the Rur­al De­vel­op­ment Min­istry?" Tewarie asked.

He ques­tioned whether its role was com­ple­men­tary, sup­ple­men­tary or in com­pe­ti­tion with Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment them­selves.

"I think we have a big prob­lem with this par­tic­u­lar is­sue and we need clar­i­fi­ca­tion on that. The third is­sue is whether or not the Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to come to the Par­lia­ment and try to ef­fect Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment by a Bill for Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment re­form and then take four to five years to ini­ti­ate that re­form.

"We are say­ing there are things which we ini­ti­at­ed that have al­ready been done and can be done now. One of them is to pro­claim the Plan­ning and Fa­cil­i­ta­tion of the De­vel­op­ment Bill and to de­cen­tralise and de­volve pow­er for busi­ness of re­gion­al plan­ning and for the de­ci­sion on house plans and small de­vel­op­ment through Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment through the cor­po­ra­tions.