Akash Sama­roo

Se­nior Re­porter

akash.sama­roo@cnc3.co.tt

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar has sent a let­ter to Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley ask­ing him to state un­equiv­o­cal­ly if he plans to at­tend the pro­posed crime talks with them.

Dur­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the 2024 Bud­get de­bate on Thurs­day, the Prime Min­is­ter told Par­lia­ment he is look­ing for­ward to meet­ing with the Op­po­si­tion to dis­cuss this coun­try’s crime prob­lems. How­ev­er, Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the con­tents of a let­ter ad­dressed to her from the Prime Min­is­ter on that very same date gave her the im­pres­sion that the Prime Min­is­ter will not be in at­ten­dance.

In her re­sponse to the Prime Min­is­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “In your let­ter of Oc­to­ber 12, 2023, your at­ten­dance and par­tic­i­pa­tion in the pro­posed dis­cus­sions ap­pear to be am­bigu­ous. It is re­port­ed that you will not be present to steer your team at the pro­posed talks. For the record, the ter­ri­fy­ing crime cri­sis is a na­tion­al emer­gency that re­quires you to demon­strate and take lead­er­ship of this ini­tia­tive if the Gov­ern­ment is se­ri­ous about hav­ing gen­uine and mean­ing­ful dis­cus­sions.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar told PM Row­ley now is not the time to take a back seat.

“I there­fore urge you to lead the Gov­ern­ment’s del­e­ga­tion at these crit­i­cal talks. Please clar­i­fy and con­firm whether you will be at­tend­ing and lead­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s team, giv­en your cru­cial po­si­tion as Head of Gov­ern­ment and Chair­man of the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil,” she wrote.

Row­ley’s at­ten­dance is not the on­ly thing puz­zling Per­sad-Bisses­sar. The Op­po­si­tion Leader said it seemed the Prime Min­is­ter was chang­ing as­pects of the talks which were pre­vi­ous­ly agreed to. The first mat­ter was how many peo­ple would be in­vit­ed to par­tic­i­pate.

“Please clar­i­fy and con­firm whether you have re­scind­ed your state­ment made in your let­ter of 16 Sep­tem­ber, 2023, propos­ing teams com­pris­ing four mem­bers each from both the Gov­ern­ment and Op­po­si­tion. In your let­ter dat­ed Oc­to­ber 12, 2023, you now pro­pose five Gov­ern­ment and four Op­po­si­tion rep­re­sen­ta­tives, which con­tra­dicts your pre­vi­ous let­ter. Please clar­i­fy and con­firm if this change was an er­ror in draft­ing or whether it is a cer­ti­fied change in your pro­pos­al. Please spec­i­fy a rea­son for this uni­lat­er­al change if it is the lat­ter,” Per­sad-Bisses­sar wrote.

Prime Minister Dr Keith Rowley

Office of the Parliament

The Op­po­si­tion Leader added that pre­vi­ous­ly the Prime Min­is­ter had pro­posed that the teams com­prise op­po­si­tion and gov­ern­ment mem­bers. How­ev­er, that has been changed to par­lia­men­tar­i­ans in his lat­est let­ter.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so sought to un­der­score the im­por­tance of in­put from peo­ple out­side of the Red House.

“The Gov­ern­ment pro­pos­es that the team will have the op­tion (on a ma­jor­i­ty vote) to co-opt the in­put of cit­i­zens by way of mem­o­ran­da and/or con­sul­ta­tion. If the change in gov­ern­ment team num­ber from four to five is not a draft­ing er­ror, you have now ef­fec­tive­ly co-opt­ed the ma­jor­i­ty vote and cre­at­ed a built-in gov­ern­ment ve­to over the choice of stake­hold­ers for col­lab­o­ra­tion. The pos­si­bil­i­ty of stake­hold­er ex­clu­sion based on the Gov­ern­ment’s bi­as­es and/or emo­tion­al re­spons­es to crit­i­cisms is high­ly prob­a­ble,” she said.

To em­pha­sise her point, Per­sad-Bisses­sar added, “In my let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 26, 2023, I stat­ed, ‘Ul­ti­mate­ly, we aim to work with all stake­hold­ers in the best in­ter­ests of our coun­try and its cit­i­zens. Re­spect­ful­ly, this can on­ly be achieved by widen­ing the pool of en­ti­ties and in­di­vid­u­als to be in­clud­ed in dis­cus­sions with the gov­ern­ment and the Op­po­si­tion.’ Please clar­i­fy and con­firm if you have made any ap­proach­es to stake­hold­ers who have pub­licly stat­ed their de­sire to at­tend the ini­tial meet­ings.”

The is­sues did not stop there. In her six-page let­ter, Per­sad-Bisses­sar fur­ther claimed the Prime Min­is­ter was at­tempt­ing to change the pre­vi­ous­ly agreed to agen­da for the pro­posed meet­ing.

“Your let­ter dat­ed Sep­tem­ber 16, 2023, stat­ed, ‘The Gov­ern­ment is al­so pre­pared to share with you its own ideas, pro­grammes and poli­cies for in­clu­sion in these dis­cus­sions.’ How­ev­er, in your lat­est let­ter of Oc­to­ber 12, 2023, your pro­posed sub­ject list con­tains on­ly leg­isla­tive mat­ters com­pris­ing a re­hash of some leg­is­la­tion and leg­is­la­tion that was al­ready laid in Par­lia­ment but nev­er passed. You have pre­sent­ed no new idea, pro­gramme, or pol­i­cy as promised, on­ly leg­is­la­tion present in the pub­lic do­main for years,” she said.

She re­mind­ed the Prime Min­is­ter that “at least 35 crime-fight­ing bills passed in the 11th and 12th Par­lia­ment led by your Gov­ern­ment, some of which were passed with sug­ges­tions and/or amend­ments made by the Op­po­si­tion to en­sure the pas­sage of good law. This is re­flect­ed in the Par­lia­ment’s record. Yet the vi­o­lent crime cri­sis con­tin­ues to spi­ral out of con­trol be­cause of on­go­ing im­ple­men­ta­tion and op­er­a­tional deficits.”

The Op­po­si­tion Leader said she ex­pects the pop­u­la­tion to be­come more and more dis­en­chant­ed with the pro­posed com­ing to­geth­er the longer the meet­ing fails to take place.

“I have no in­ten­tion of play­ing pol­i­tics with this im­por­tant mat­ter and be­ing bu­reau­crat­ic pen friends with the Gov­ern­ment in any pub­lic re­la­tions pro­mo­tion, while in­no­cent cit­i­zens are be­ing ter­rorised and bru­tal­ly mur­dered by vi­o­lent crim­i­nals,” she warned.

No date has yet been set for the meet­ing but in his con­tri­bu­tion to the Bud­get de­bate on Thurs­day, Dr Row­ley con­firmed that the meet­ing will take place.

“We’re hear­ing that we’re go­ing to be meet­ing and we agree to meet af­ter the Bud­get. To­day is the last day of the de­bate and then there are five more days for ex­am­i­na­tion of the num­bers and then the bud­get de­bate goes to the oth­er place. I did say pub­licly that af­ter the de­bate we will take them up on their of­fer,” he said

He then re­ferred to the Op­po­si­tion Leader’s al­ter­na­tive crime plan which was read dur­ing her con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate on Mon­day.

With­in the con­text of the up­com­ing meet­ing Dr Row­ley said, “I did take time to go through it line by line to fig­ure out what is it that we’re miss­ing and what we can en­gage in and there are some is­sues that we can en­gage in use­ful­ly and I hope that we do but what I did find is that much of it was re­lat­ed to ei­ther what was al­ready go­ing or the (Po­lice) Com­mis­sion­er’s day’s work or what we ex­pect the Com­mis­sion­er to be en­gaged in.”

Row­ley said giv­en the past con­duct of the Op­po­si­tion with re­spect to sup­port­ing the Gov­ern­ment on crime fight­ing mat­ters, he is not en­tire­ly op­ti­mistic the talks will yield the de­sired re­sult.

“So, I look for­ward to meet­ing with the Op­po­si­tion to dis­cuss mat­ters of this na­ture to see what comes out of it but I am not hold­ing my breath,” he said point­ed­ly.

Guardian Me­dia was un­able to get a re­sponse from the PM on the mat­ter at the open­ing of the Archibald-De Leon High­way in Point Fortin yes­ter­day as he left the event short­ly af­ter.