Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has chal­lenged Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley to go to court on the in­tegri­ty is­sues raised by UNC MP Sad­dam Ho­sein and Sen­a­tor Wade Mark.

UNC front­lin­er Jack Warn­er has al­so urged his In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty mem­bers who are still wa­ver­ing to come back home to UNC - and NTA leader Gary Grif­fith says the PNM "is on the ropes."

Each spoke at last night's UNC Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment cam­paign meet­ing in Ari­ma.

Not­ed Row­ley's state­ments on the UNC's chal­lenge of is­sues re­lat­ed to his town­house pur­chase in To­ba­go at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net me­dia con­fer­ence, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "This man used na­tion­al TV from the podi­um of the Prime Min­is­ter to give a per­son­al po­lit­i­cal ex­pla­na­tion and bouff any­body who ask him any­thing. It was like two-hour melt­down

"He said he's go­ing to sue Sad­dam and Mark - well, Mr Row­ley, come to court and the great­est lawyer in T&T will skew­er you on the wit­ness box - Anand Ram­lo­gan!"

Cit­ing home in­va­sions, mur­ders and "cow­ard tax" ex­tor­tion, Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­peat­ed­ly made her "light em up call" against crim­i­nals.

"I make no apolo­gies for say­ing light em up and re­load and fire again !! Rack it, load it and knock it, knock it again and rack it up!"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said when the UNC re­turns to gov­ern­ment, she'll of­fer a gun amnesty to PNM MPs and com­men­ta­tors who have le­gal firearms so they can give them back.

"You all re­al­ly think I don’t know about the ‘mat­ic (au­to­mat­ic) dropped off at the MOPS (sta­tion)?"she added.

"We know which deal­er sold it, which min­is­ter who bought it, which se­nior of­fi­cer or­gan­ised for the min­is­ter to get rid of it. We know the of­fi­cer who dealt with it at MOPS. We know the se­r­i­al num­ber," she said, adding when Row­ley spoke of gun is­sues the "fel­la" got fright­ened and gave the gun back to MOPS.

She added, "On Mon­day, come out and light up this dic­ta­tor gov­ern­ment with your vote - Mon­day is Light Up Mon­day ... this meet­ing is our last in the 14 cor­po­ra­tions. (PNM) didn't go to all. They're ex­pect­ing de­feat."

Mean­while, Warn­er made a ral­ly­ing call to those sit­ting on the fence.

"To my ILP mem­bers: it's too cru­cial a time to sit on the fence. My ILP mem­bers, many of you who are still un­cer­tain - put aside your griev­ances re­al or imag­ined and come back home!"

Warn­er added, "Far­ley (Au­gus­tine) has To­ba­go. From Mon­day, Kam­la will have Trinidad. Row­ley will be the PM of the 'and' be­tween Trinidad and To­ba­go."

Warn­er al­so re­spond­ed to Row­ley's claim that he (Warn­er) had re­unit­ed with the UNC be­cause he want­ed to be with peo­ple who'd make a "Sec­tion 35" deal to halt his ex­tra­di­tion from T&T.

Say­ing Row­ley was talk­ing fool­ish­ness, Warn­er said Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment isn't Cen­tral Gov­ern­ment, as lo­cal gov­ern­ment has no pow­er to make a deal of any kind and the UNC had no pow­er over the courts.

Warn­er added ,"So what 'deal? I've been in FI­FA 30 years, FI­FA nev­er charged me for im­pro­pri­ety of any kind. I helped thou­sands of peo­ple. The Chief Mag­is­trate put my ex­tra­di­tion on hold where it still is and she was crit­i­cal of the PNM and US lawyers. This Gov­ern­ment spent mil­lions in le­gal fees with 17 lawyers to have me ex­tra­dit­ed - and I' m still here!"

Warn­er said he'd re­joined UNC be­cause T&T had a two-par­ty sys­tem and while there were oth­er par­ties, they couldn't change things.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar, dub­bing Warn­er the prodi­gal son who's re­turned, added, "What non­sense is (Row­ley) talk­ing about - Kam­la and Jack mak­ing deal about ex­tra­di­tion? The mat­ter is be­fore the cour­t­house, the cour­t­house will de­ter­mine that!

"There's no deal, we can make no deal. But I think you (Row­ley) made a deal with (Warn­er) be­fore, so you know what you talk­ing bout! We'll ex­pose you! When I say light him up - light him up!"

NTA leader Grif­fith mean­while said it's been a "long, long cam­paign" and every­where he'd heard "enough is enough - time for change." He said if Row­ley has prob­lems with peo­ple with li­cenced firearms, they should re­turn it.