Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar claims the UNC has in­for­ma­tion that Gov­ern­ment will in­crease elec­tric­i­ty rates af­ter the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion. She spoke on the is­sue dur­ing a po­lit­i­cal meet­ing at the Guaico Sec­ondary School where the par­ty pre­sent­ed its can­di­dates for the Ari­ma Bor­ough Cor­po­ra­tion and the Ma­yaro/Rio Claro and San­gre Grande Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tions.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar told UNC sup­port­ers the Au­gust 14 elec­tion is the first step to gen­er­al elec­tion vic­to­ry.

“Grande you must bring it home un­der UNC man­age­ment!” she urged.

She claimed that in the months af­ter the lo­cal gov­ern­ment elec­tion Gov­ern­ment is go­ing to raise elec­tric­i­ty rates “your prop­er­ty tax and 25 per cent in­her­i­tance tax will be go­ing to­wards buy­ing body bags for the hun­dreds of mur­dered cit­i­zens un­der Hinds’ tenure.”

She con­demned as race-bait­ing Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s re­marks at a re­cent PNM meet­ing in St James.

“Their on­ly hope is the tired race card. I’ve been warn­ing you to be on the look­out for Row­ley play­ing the race card and sure enough he pulled the race card which is in PNM’s play­book.

“He said stand your ground law was a code for giv­ing a cer­tain type of peo­ple guns so they could shoot an­oth­er cer­tain type of peo­ple. His state­ment isn’t just racist, it’s wicked and dan­ger­ous. The idea that peo­ple will shoot a ban­dit be­cause of their race is to­tal non­sense! Red, white, black, blue, green - we’re all be­ing hit by ban­dits,” she said

“You re­al­ly think race mat­ters when crim­i­nals break in­to some­one’s home and the par­ent is wor­ried about their daugh­ter be­ing raped and their chil­dren be­ing shot and beat, that if they have a le­gal firearm, when they pull it to stop the crim­i­nal then will ask, ‘Mr. Ban­dit be­fore I shoot you could you please take off your mask so I can see what is your race be­cause I may not shoot you if you look like me?’

Per­sad-Bisses­sar added: “In­stead of play­ing the race card, do your du­ty to pro­tect cit­i­zens. Start by fir­ing that in­com­pe­tent you have for a Min­is­ter of Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty. Hinds has to go and af­ter you fire him, Row­ley, fire your­self !”

Re­fer­ring to the 305 mur­ders record­ed so far this year, the UNC leader said: “I had to ask the dougla Anil (Roberts) which half of him is the shoot­er and which half the vic­tim. I strong­ly con­demn Row­ley for his dan­ger­ous and evil com­ments. Every race, creed, every re­li­gion can be found with­in the per­pe­tra­tors of crime and the vic­tims of crime.

“Row­ley is so out of touch with re­al­i­ty that he doesn’t re­al­ize peo­ple are so ter­ri­fied when crim­i­nals break in­to their homes that they’ll shoot to pro­tect their fam­i­ly re­gard­less of whether the ban­dit is brown, black, green, yel­low, pink or red.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar ad­vised Row­ley to “stop cry­ing” on Face­book, “come down from there” and do some re­al work by meet­ing peo­ple to find out their prob­lems.

She added: “The Gov­ern­ment is cam­paign­ing on in­nu­en­do, gos­sip, rep­u­ta­tion de­struc­tion, po­lit­i­cal op­por­tunism, out­right un­truths and bribery but the UNC is cam­paign­ing on plans, poli­cies, ideas, and pro­grammes.”

Per­sad Bisses­sar said the UNC will re­peal prop­er­ty tax and im­ple­ment plans for the se­cu­ri­ty of the coun­try, in­clud­ing:

* De­ploy­ing mu­nic­i­pal po­lice to se­cure schools and the streets that stu­dents use to get home.

* In­crease com­mu­ni­ca­tion be­tween mu­nic­i­pal po­lice, coun­cil­lors and po­lice sta­tions in each di­vi­sion.

* De­vel­op a sys­tem for burgess­es to give coun­cil­lors in­for­ma­tion to put on record at meet­ings with mu­nic­i­pal po­lice and po­lice di­vi­sion rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

* Work with T&TEC for im­proved street light­ing

* In­tro­duce stand your ground law against home in­va­sion and laws to make le­gal gun own­er­ship eas­i­er for busi­ness own­ers and oth­er cit­i­zens

* De­vel­op­ment of a sys­tem of in­di­vid­ual risk and fi­nan­cial as­sess­ment for bail.

* Es­tab­lish min­i­mum de­ten­tion cen­tres for non-vi­o­lent of­fend­ers with day work re­lease and night de­ten­tion.

* Set up a fund for chil­dren who lose par­ents to crime

“PNM is of­fer­ing noth­ing in terms of plans or poli­cies. They’re cam­paign­ing on im­pos­ing prop­er­ty tax, in­her­i­tance tax, fake lo­cal gov­ern­ment re­form, four per cent for work­ers and mil­lion-dol­lar bribes for Ju­das­es to put on a red shirt,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

RIC: T&TEC re­view in­com­plete

In re­sponse to the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s rate hike claim, the Reg­u­lat­ed In­dus­tries Com­mis­sion’s (RIC) said de­ter­mi­na­tion of T&TEC’s price re­view is still in­com­plete, but it is mak­ing steady progress and will in­form the pub­lic and re­lease the fi­nal de­ter­mi­na­tion when the ex­er­cise is com­plet­ed.

The RIC, an in­de­pen­dent statu­to­ry body es­tab­lished as the eco­nom­ic reg­u­la­tor for T&T’s elec­tric­i­ty and wa­ter and waste­water sec­tors, said it prefers not to com­ment on po­lit­i­cal mat­ters or re­spond to com­ments made in a po­lit­i­cal fo­rum.

How­ev­er, it stat­ed: “The RIC con­tin­ues to work on find­ing the best over­all so­lu­tion to the many help­ful but com­pet­ing re­quests and com­ments made dur­ing its con­sul­ta­tions re­gard­ing the price re­view for T&TEC.”

Pub­lic Utilti­ies Min­is­ter Mar­vin Gon­za­les ac­cused Per­sad-Bisses­sar of seek­ing is­sues to ob­tain po­lit­i­cal rel­e­vance.

“The mat­ter is still with the RIC and I haven’t had any com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the Com­mis­sion on it,” he said.

“I know once they are ready they will up­date me. I have kept a dis­tance from the process be­cause the law was de­signed to keep politi­cians away from the process and for sound rea­sons. The is­sue of rate re­views can be very po­lit­i­cal in na­ture, whilst for the util­i­ty com­pa­nies, it can be their very sur­vival.”

Gon­za­les added: “The con­duct of the Op­po­si­tion Leader is a clas­si­cal ex­am­ple of why this mat­ter has not been ap­pro­pri­ate­ly dealt with in the past. Kam­la just needs to re­tire be­cause she is search­ing for po­lit­i­cal rel­e­vance.”