Kim­ber­ly Mack­han

Vice-pres­i­dent of the Me­dia As­so­ci­a­tion of T&T (Matt) Judy Ray­mond has said that Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning's con­nec­tion be­tween the launch of drug in­ter­dic­tion coast guard boats and me­dia at­tacks against him were "too sil­ly to de­serve a re­sponse." Ray­mond said Matt was not plan­ning to is­sue a re­sponse to Man­ning's state­ment and that the Gov­ern­ment ap­peared to be "out of touch" with the pop­u­la­tion's feel­ings. "My own per­son­al opin­ion is that it re­al­ly is too sil­ly to de­serve a re­sponse," she said, dur­ing a tele­phone in­ter­view yes­ter­day. "I think the Gov­ern­ment is kind of out of touch with how peo­ple are feel­ing," she said.

"They do not un­der­stand why there is so much hos­til­i­ty and re­sent­ment right now and they are just pass­ing it around to a scape­goat and the me­dia hap­pened to be there." Ray­mond was re­spond­ing to re­marks Man­ning made at a Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment cot­tage meet­ing in St Mar­garet's Vil­lage, Clax­ton Bay, on Mon­day night. Man­ning held the be­lief that there was a cor­re­la­tion be­tween last month's launch of drug in­ter­dic­tion coast guard boats and in­creased me­dia at­tacks against him for the same pe­ri­od.

"The minute those boats were prop­er­ly de­ployed, this is our fast pa­trol crafts and our in­ter­cep­tors, we be­gan to no­tice at­tacks on the Prime Min­is­ter in the me­dia. (Are) You get­ting the mes­sage?" Man­ning asked. Ac­cord­ing to Ray­mond, the Gov­ern­ment ap­peared to be un­able to un­der­stand that the pop­u­la­tion was frus­trat­ed from its un­ful­filled promis­es to them and the Gov­ern­ment seemed to be us­ing the me­dia as a scape­goat. "This is a gov­ern­ment well in­to its sec­ond term, so peo­ple ex­pect that by now it should have de­liv­ered on many of its promis­es," she said.