Op­po­si­tion Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment David Lee has de­scribed as “po­lit­i­cal trick­ery and de­cep­tion” Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s promise to go all out to help those in need in 2023.

Dur­ing his Christ­mas Day mes­sage post­ed to his Twit­ter page Im­bert said 2023 will be bet­ter than pre­vi­ous years and that the im­proved fi­nan­cial po­si­tion will be dis­trib­uted eq­ui­tably to all cit­i­zens of T&T.

How­ev­er Lee, the Pointe-a-Pierre MP, has tak­en Im­bert to task for the state­ment say­ing that the gov­ern­ment is ful­ly aware that cit­i­zens need im­me­di­ate as­sis­tance now for this Christ­mas sea­son as they faced un­par­al­leled eco­nom­ic tur­moil.

“For weeks he boast­ed about the bud­get sur­plus, but if Min­is­ter Im­bert tru­ly un­der­stood the mean­ing of Christ­mas good­will, he would have utilised the sur­plus this month to help fight the cost of liv­ing as op­posed to sell­ing dreams on Christ­mas day,” Lee stat­ed in a re­lease is­sued yes­ter­day.

Lee said it is time that Im­bert’s “fan­cy words, big promis­es, and car­rot on a stick pol­i­tics” end.

“If Min­is­ter Im­bert is se­ri­ous about dis­trib­ut­ing the wealth of our na­tion eq­ui­tably as he stat­ed in his mes­sage, he needs to de­liv­er re­lief now and not when he wants.

“If the min­is­ter is worth his talk, then he would utilise the im­proved fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion he boasts about to re­in­state the fu­el sub­sidy which would sig­nif­i­cant­ly curb the ris­ing cost of liv­ing,” Lee said.

Lee called on Im­bert to put his mon­ey where his mouth is and en­sure prop­er re­leas­es are made for roads, clean­ing of rivers, schools and oth­er crit­i­cal com­mu­ni­ty-based in­fra­struc­tur­al pro­grammes.

“This coun­try has had enough lip ser­vice from this gov­ern­ment. This coun­try has ex­pe­ri­enced the high­est en­er­gy prices in years in 2022 yet cit­i­zens have not ben­e­fit­ed. It is time this gov­ern­ment end talk of the im­proved fi­nan­cial sit­u­a­tion and ac­tu­al­ly de­liv­ers for the peo­ple or stands aside as the UNC is pre­pared to do so,” Lee stat­ed.