Richard Lord

For­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning yes­ter­day dared the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment to lock up both him and for­mer ex­ec­u­tive chair­man of the Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion (Ude­cott) Calder Hart.Man­ning made the com­ment while seat­ed dur­ing cross talk at yes­ter­day's 2012 bud­get de­bate in the Par­lia­ment at the In­ter­na­tion­al Wa­ter­front Com­plex, Port-of-Spain. For­eign Af­fairs and Com­mu­ni­ca­tions Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan was mak­ing his con­tri­bu­tion to the de­bate dur­ing the pre-tea ses­sion when Man­ning dared the Gov­ern­ment ar­rest him for al­leged wrong­do­ing.

He was heard say­ing: "Lock him up! Lock up Calder Hart and lock me up, too. Look me here, lock me up."Man­ning de­scribed the Gov­ern­ment as "vac­u­ous" and was the first to thump his desk when Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley said, in his re­sponse to the bud­get, that the Gov­ern­ment had based it on a high oil price of US$75 a bar­rel.Row­ley said the fig­ure was set that high so when the bud­get did not achieve the pro­ject­ed rev­enue, the Gov­ern­ment would seek a con­di­tion­al loan from the In­ter­na­tion­al Mon­e­tary Fund."That's cor­rect, that's cor­rect," Man­ning said.

On the eve of Mon­day's bud­get pre­sen­ta­tion, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the coun­try would not seek any fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance from the IMF un­der her watch.Man­ning was lat­er asked by House Speak­er Wade Mark to with­draw a com­ment he made about an MP speak­ing the truth. Ini­tial­ly he did so in protest, say­ing he would, how­ev­er, main­tain his opin­ion.In re­sponse to a re­quest by Mark for an un­re­served with­draw­al of the com­ment, Man­ning even­tu­al­ly ac­ced­ed.Ear­li­er, Ram­bachan ac­cused Row­ley and the PNM of try­ing to scare the pop­u­la­tion by claim­ing the Gov­ern­ment was about to re­turn to the IMF for fi­nan­cial as­sis­tance. He said based on the sound eco­nom­ic man­age­ment of the T&T econ­o­my, there would be no need for such ac­tion.

Ram­bachan said there was in­vestor con­fi­dence in T&T and the Gov­ern­ment was com­mit­ted to en­sur­ing the econ­o­my was fur­ther de­vel­oped in the com­ing years.He al­so point­ed out that while Row­ley did not wear the PNM's bal­isi­er tie yes­ter­day, most oth­er Op­po­si­tion MPs, in­clud­ing Man­ning, did.Af­ter the Op­po­si­tion ques­tioned the rel­e­vance of the PNM tie in the de­bate, House Leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal ad­vised Ram­bachan to "tie it up."Ear­li­er, Mark warned Ram­bachan against re­fer­ring to any MP as the 12th man - an ob­vi­ous ref­er­ence to Man­ning.