Ali­cia Llanos

Gov­ern­ment's press sec­re­tary Garvin Nicholas is call­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley's at­tack on him an act of "des­per­a­tion." Nicholas was speak­ing at yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter, St Clair Av­enue, Port-of-Spain. When asked about Row­ley ac­cus­ing him of stat­ing that cam­paign promis­es to low­er the pen­sion­able age to 60 was a "mis­print" in the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship pre-elec­tion ad­ver­tise­ments, Nicholas said it was sim­ply an act of "des­per­a­tion."

"In a closed group on Face­book, I was asked to ex­plain my thoughts on what seemed to be a break of promise that the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship had re­neged on bring­ing the pen­sion­able age down to 60," Nicholas ex­plained. "I stat­ed that my un­der­stand­ing was we would change the grant back to a pen­sion and raise it from $2,000 to $3,000. "At no time did I make the claim that low­er­ing the pen­sion­able age was a mis­print." Nicholas said it was nev­er a promise of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship to low­er the pen­sion­able age. "At no time did I sug­gest we were go­ing to change the pen­sion­able age to 60... it is not a part of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship man­i­festo," he said.

Nicholas said it sur­prised him that the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment could take a dis­cus­sion on Face­book and spin it in­to a such an "er­ro­neous" sto­ry. He said this was sim­ply a case of typ­i­cal PNM tac­tics, say­ing that ear­li­er they claimed the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship was plan­ning to end the Gov­ern­ment As­sist­ed Ter­tiary Ed­u­ca­tion (Gate) grant. Nicholas said ev­i­dence had shown that since the Gov­ern­ment took of­fice, it had ho­n­oured its promis­es, us­ing the lap­tops for SEA stu­dents as an ex­am­ple. On Wednes­day, Row­ley is­sued a press re­lease slam­ming Nicholas for say­ing the promise to low­er the pen­sion­able age to 60 was a "mis­print."