Rad­hi­ca Sookraj

Sup­port­ers who were ea­ger to hear an elec­tion date at the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress' 26th An­niver­sary Cel­e­bra­tion in Cou­va yes­ter­day left dis­ap­point­ed last night, af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad Bisses­sar re­vealed she had no in­ten­tion of call­ing an ear­ly elec­tion.Ad­dress­ing thou­sands of flag wav­ing sup­port­ers at Rien­zi Com­plex, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she will not fol­low her pre­de­ces­sor, Patrick Man­ning, by call­ing elec­tions be­fore time.

"To­day, spec­u­la­tion is all over that I am go­ing to an­nounce the elec­tion date to­day. But lis­ten care­ful­ly, the last time a man tried that he lost the elec­tion when he called it be­fore time."I say my track record speaks for it­self. We have held every sin­gle elec­tion with­in time, ac­cord­ing to the laws of T&T," she shout­ed while trum­pets blast­ed and horns blared.

She added, "To­day, I say I will con­tin­ue to com­ply with the law. I give you the as­sur­ance that I will call the elec­tions when the elec­tions are con­sti­tu­tion­al­ly due un­der the law."Send­ing a mes­sage to Op­po­si­tion leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley, who has re­peat­ed­ly de­mand­ed the elec­tion date, Per­sad Bisses­sar said no­body will force her to call elec­tions ear­ly.

"No one will jumbie me to call an elec­tion be­fore it is due. They could jump high, they could jump low, no elec­tion date will be an­nounced be­fore it is due. They could bark and shout, we will call it when it is due," she said.

Per­sad Bisses­sar al­so took Row­ley to task, say­ing he was us­ing Par­lia­men­tary priv­i­lege to bring mem­bers of Gov­ern­ment in­to dis­re­pute. But say­ing that Gov­ern­ment planned to move a mo­tion of cen­sure against Row­ley in Par­lia­ment, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said this will be one of the ways of en­sur­ing that peo­ple's char­ac­ters are pro­tect­ed.

"I have in­struct­ed the leader of the House, Dr Roodal Mooni­lal, to file his mo­tion of cen­sure and we will call on the House for Row­ley to be sus­pend­ed from the ser­vices of the House," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.Say­ing that Row­ley should not be al­lowed to use Par­lia­ment to im­pugn of­fice hold­ers, the PM vowed to deal with Row­ley with­in the con­fines of the Par­lia­ment.

Re­fer­ring to the E-mail­gate scan­dal, Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so called on the po­lice to clear the air and an­nounce pub­licly whether the se­ries of e-mails read in Par­lia­ment by Row­ley in May 2013 were true.

The e-mails im­pli­cat­ed Per­sad-Bisses­sar, for­mer at­tor­ney gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Su­ruj Ram­bachan in con­spir­a­cies against the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions and a re­porter, as well as al­le­ga­tions of the pay­ment of monies in ex­change for free­dom of for­mer fi­nanciers.

How­ev­er, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said there is proof the e-mails were fab­ri­cat­ed and she called on the po­lice to take ac­tion against Row­ley for mis­lead­ing the coun­try."I have legal­ly all the Google records pur­suant to a court or­der in the case filed by the In­tegri­ty Com­mis­sion and all the e-mails for the month of Sep­tem­ber which Row­ley sent out were fake.

"Not a sin­gle e-mail re­mote­ly re­sem­bled any­thing that he read. Three sources have said there is no sub­stance, no truth and no ba­sis for the fake e-mails that Row­ley read. We gave full au­thor­i­ty to dis­close those records and tonight I call on the po­lice to state whether there was any e-mail as Row­ley said," Per­sad-Bisses­sar said.

Pre­dict­ing that Row­ley will pay the price for his mis­chief, she said as T&T goes in­to elec­tions the truth should be made known."Should the con­clu­sion of the re­port in­di­cate that the con­tents of the e-mail were fake and crim­i­nal pro­ceed­ings un­der­tak­en, the Op­po­si­tion leader must im­me­di­ate­ly re­sign from his seat," she said.

Dur­ing the cel­e­bra­tions, sev­er­al UNC founders, in­clud­ing Bas­deo Pan­day, John Humphrey, Dr Al­lan Mc Ken­zie, Trevor Su­dama, Lloyd Williams and Ram­per­sad Paras­ram, were laud­ed.Pan­day failed to show up as he in­di­cat­ed be­fore, but his pro­teges said his con­tri­bu­tion to the UNC will al­ways be re­mem­bered.Sup­port­ers were al­so treat­ed to mu­sic from Ray­mond Ram­nar­ine & Dil-E-Nadan.

Row­ley dan­ger­ous­says Mooni­lal

Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress deputy po­lit­i­cal leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal has sent out a mes­sage to fence­line vot­ers, warn­ing them that Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley is a dan­ger­ous man who can­not be trust­ed with pow­er.Mooni­lal was speak­ing as the par­ty cel­e­brat­ed its 26th an­niver­sary at its Rien­zi Com­plex, Cou­va head­quar­ters yes­ter­day.

Par­ty founder Bas­deo Pan­day was a no show, but oth­er stal­warts, in­clud­ing founder John Hum­frey, first chair­man Ram­per­sad Paras­ram, for­mer Ari­ma can­di­date Car­ol Mer­rick and Lloyd Williams and Dr Al­lan Mc Ken­zie, at­tend­ed the fes­tiv­i­ties.Mooni­lal, who joined the par­ty as a youth of­fi­cer, said al­though the PNM has al­ways made promis­es, it is Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar who has al­ways de­liv­ered on her promis­es.

"This par­ty has been found­ed on the prin­ci­ple of equal­i­ty, na­tion­al uni­ty and so­cial jus­tice. That is the rea­son that the UNC is the on­ly par­ty that can build coali­tion gov­ern­ments and oc­cu­py of­fice."

Say­ing the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) had de­stroyed the health, ed­u­ca­tion and agri­cul­tur­al sec­tors, Mooni­lal said the PP would need an­oth­er five years to con­tin­ue its work. He said for those who were un­cer­tain about who to sup­port, it is clear that Row­ley did not have the best in­ter­est of the coun­try at heart."I warned T&T that Kei­th Row­ley is a clear dan­ger to this coun­try," he said.

Mooni­lal said Fri­day was a hor­rif­ic day as Row­ley filed a mo­tion of no con­fi­dence in Fi­nance Min­is­ter Lar­ry Howai and quot­ed from a doc­u­ment of a le­gal opin­ion by a promi­nent queen's coun­sel from Bar­ba­dos, Sr Hen­ry Forde, QC. He said Howai rose af­ter­ward and told Row­ley that he and the par­ty had gone out of his way and con­tact­ed the lawyer in Bar­ba­dos to ver­i­fy the in­for­ma­tion. But Mooni­lal said Forde told them he did not know Howai and had nev­er writ­ten the doc­u­ment.

Slam­ming Row­ley for not check­ing his facts, Mooni­lal said Row­ley was ir­re­spon­si­ble and reck­less. He al­so slammed In­de­pen­dent Lib­er­al Par­ty (ILP) leader Jack Warn­er, say­ing he was por­tray­ing him­self as a cor­rup­tion buster while fac­ing in­ter­na­tion­al scruti­ny for cor­rup­tion.