Richard Lord

Ques­tions sur­round the fund­ing for hour long po­lit­i­cal broad­cast

No state funds were used to spon­sor a live Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship tele­vi­sion broad­cast on three lo­cal sta­tions on Wednes­day, tout­ing the suc­cess of the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment. This was re­vealed by Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Dr Su­ru­jrat­tan Ram­bachan, who is al­so one of the deputy po­lit­i­cal lead­ers of the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, the dom­i­nant mem­ber of the Gov­ern­ment, dur­ing yes­ter­day's post-Cab­i­net news con­fer­ence at the Of­fice of the Prime Min­is­ter in St Clair. The tele­cast was harsh­ly crit­i­cised by many speak­ers at a pub­lic meet­ing of the Peo­ple's Na­tion­al Move­ment in Five Rivers, Arou­ca, on Wednes­day night. But Ram­bachan, in re­sponse to ques­tions on the mat­ter, said yes­ter­day: "No state funds have been used for that pro­gramme...That is a par­ty pro­gramme."

He said the pro­gramme would be aired every Wednes­day on state-owned CN­MG and pos­si­bly the oth­er sta­tions. He said it would al­so be broad­cast on ra­dio sta­tions and pub­lished in the news­pa­pers. Asked if the ini­tia­tive was trig­gered by the large crowd at a PNM pub­lic march from the Red House to the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent ear­li­er this month, Ram­bachan said, "No." He said the PP was a po­lit­i­cal or­gan­i­sa­tion which is al­ways plan­ning for the fu­ture. "This was planned long be­fore the PNM meet­ing last night...It is not some­thing that was any re­ac­tion to the PNM." Ram­bachan said the PP was try­ing to de­vel­op the best peo­ple's par­tic­i­pa­to­ry democ­ra­cy in the world which re­quired the Gov­ern­ment to be in "con­stant con­tact, con­stant con­ver­sa­tion with the peo­ple, to in­form the peo­ple of what is hap­pen­ing and to ed­u­cate your pop­u­la­tion about the af­fairs of your par­ty and the Gov­ern­ment."

He said the PP does not just cam­paign dur­ing the run-up to elec­tions. He said a new mech­a­nism is be­ing put in place to en­sure lo­cal gov­ern­ment agen­cies can ac­cess mon­ey as soon as the bud­get was pre­sent­ed. He said 400 lo­cal gov­ern­ment projects would be launched in Oc­to­ber. Com­ment­ing on this week­end's pre-bud­get ral­ly, Ram­bachan said it was in­tend­ed to show "the strength which this par­ty has." He said the Gov­ern­ment was not run­ning scared. "The Gov­ern­ment is on a roll be­cause we know what we are do­ing is to the sat­is­fac­tion of the peo­ple of T&T," he said. "So the ral­ly is the peo­ple's way of say­ing, 'We're not turn­ing back the clock, we are go­ing for­ward with the Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment." Ram­bachan said the pro­posed mo­tion of cen­sure to be brought to Par­lia­ment by Op­po­si­tion Leader Dr Kei­th Row­ley against At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Anand Ram­lo­gan in the wake of the Sec­tion 34 fi­as­co will fail.