Richard Lord

Trinidad will not in­vade To­ba­go. This was the state­ment made by Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar dur­ing her ad­dress at the launch of the To­ba­go Or­gan­i­sa­tion of the Peo­ple (TOP) elec­tion cam­paign last evening at Tamarind Square, Scar­bor­ough. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said so in re­sponse to crit­ics of the TOP who said a vic­to­ry for the TOP would lead to the PP tak­ing over To­ba­go.

"Have no fear of your Gov­ern­ment," the PM added. She said: "No­body could con­trol Ash­worth Jack." Ear­li­er, she said her Gov­ern­ment was not dis­re­spect­ing To­ba­go. She said the TOP was a crit­i­cal part of the PP Gov­ern­ment and Jack had been con­sult­ed on all pol­i­cy mat­ters. The PM said the PP Gov­ern­ment, in­clud­ing the TOP, named the air­port in Crown Point in ho­n­our of To­ba­go's Arthur NR Robin­son, for­mer pres­i­dent and prime min­is­ter. She said the Gov­ern­ment bought new air­craft to be used on the lo­cal air bridge. She asked: "Where is the dis­re­spect?"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar list­ed sev­er­al projects which were at var­i­ous stages of com­ple­tion in To­ba­go, in­clud­ing a gas sta­tion in Rox­bor­ough, ter­tiary in­sti­tu­tions, a prison and oth­ers in To­ba­go, which were done un­der the PP Gov­ern­ment. She said a bill to en­able To­bag­o­ni­ans to legal­ly own lands on the is­land is to be de­bat­ed in Par­lia­ment next week. She al­so said the Gov­ern­ment had pre­pared leg­is­la­tion to amend the Con­sti­tu­tion and to give To­ba­go in­ter­nal self-gov­ern­ment.

She said one of the ma­jor changes in the bill was for the cre­ation of in­de­pen­dent as­sem­bly­men. Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the bill will be laid on Jan­u­ary 7 and de­bat­ed on Jan­u­ary 16. It re­quires a two/thirds ma­jor­i­ty vote to be­come law. The sup­port of the Op­po­si­tion PNM is crit­i­cal for pas­sage of the bill.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar called on the PNM to sup­port the mea­sures. It is not ex­pect­ed that the PNM will sup­port the leg­is­la­tion. She said the bill will give the THA greater pow­er to pass its own laws. It will be giv­en more pow­ers in sev­er­al in­stances. She said the bud­getary al­lo­ca­tion to To­ba­go is to be in­creased to eight per cent.

Pro­to­col was amend­ed last night to al­low po­lit­i­cal leader of TOP Ash­worth Jack to speak af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar. Per­sad-Bisses­sar be­gan her ad­dress by say­ing she had break­ing news-that the next THA leader would be Ash­worth Jack. She said Lon­don's PNM had failed to de­liv­er on its promis­es to the peo­ple of the is­land.

He said the PNM spent $17 bil­lion and was un­able to show any sig­nif­i­cant de­vel­op­ment on the is­land. She said the ques­tion is, "Has the qual­i­ty of life for To­ba­go peo­ple, in­clud­ing the chil­dren, im­proved un­der Lon­don? It is not about the house Jack built. It is about the THA and who will man­age the econ­o­my of To­ba­go bet­ter. She said the Lon­don ad­min­is­tra­tion had failed mis­er­ably in all ar­eas of life in To­ba­go.

"While they promised, they did not de­liv­er," she told the cheer­ing crowd. Wear­ing their yel­low TOP T-shirts a large crowd came out to see the pre­sen­ta­tion of the par­ty's can­di­dates for the 12 elec­toral dis­tricts. Jack, in his ad­dress, dealt with the TOP's pro­gramme for eco­nom­ic de­vel­op­ment on the is­land.

Ca­lyp­son­ian Sug­ar Aloes, who per­formed three songs, was in­tro­duced by the chair­man of the meet­ing and Jus­tice Min­is­ter Christlyn Moore as the par­ty's newest mem­ber. A se­nior TOP of­fi­cial min­utes lat­er said the an­nounce­ment was "just po­lit­i­cal talk."

Ear­li­er, To­ba­go De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Del­mon Bak­er urged TOP sup­port­ers to re­mem­ber the sev­er­al au­di­tor gen­er­al's re­ports which showed that mil­lions of dol­lars were un­ac­count­ed for by the PNM-con­trolled THA. He said the Orville Lon­don led THA had mis­man­aged the af­fairs of the is­land for the past twelve years and should be vot­ed out of of­fice next month.