NADALEEN SINGH

Prime Min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning has evad­ed any ques­tions posed to him about the elec­tion, say­ing "no com­ment at this time. I spoke to you every day of the week so far." Jour­nal­ists at­tempt­ed to speak with Man­ning about de­vel­op­ments in the up­com­ing gen­er­al elec­tion, short­ly af­ter he de­liv­ered the fea­ture ad­dress at the T&T Cham­ber of In­dus­try and Com­merce's an­nu­al meet­ing and lun­cheon at the Hy­att Re­gency Trinidad, Port-of-Spain, yes­ter­day.

"No com­ment at this time....I spoke to you every day of the week so far," said Man­ning to a group of re­porters, as he hur­ried­ly walked out of the Port-of-Spain room at the Hy­att. Be­fore Man­ning de­liv­ered his ad­dress, An­gel­la Per­sad, pres­i­dent of the cham­ber, in her re­marks, made a call for the gen­er­al elec­tion to be held im­me­di­ate­ly. "Prime Min­is­ter, we ask that you re­veal the elec­tion date as ear­ly as pos­si­ble so we can set­tle back to work," Per­sad said. Per­sad said she hoped the elec­tion pe­ri­od would be used as an op­por­tu­ni­ty for in­tro­spec­tion.

"We hope, too, that this elec­tion cam­paign would be used as an op­por­tu­ni­ty to re-eval­u­ate our po­si­tion and re-es­tab­lish our path to 2020," she said. Per­sad said T&T was be­ing re­de­fined po­lit­i­cal­ly, as "we have just wit­nessed the chang­ing of the guards at the Op­po­si­tion par­ty and their very own loy­al­ists who sought change. "The voice of the peo­ple has nev­er been so strong and so out­spo­ken and the Ho­n­ourable Prime Min­is­ter has re­spond­ed by dis­solv­ing Par­lia­ment in prepa­ra­tion for a gen­er­al elec­tion...Cer­tain­ly, our democ­ra­cy is well at work," she said.

Per­sad said the cor­po­rate ethics of our coun­try had been test­ed "in a way nev­er ex­pe­ri­enced be­fore and the pub­lic voice is now al­most re­lent­less in its pur­suit of an­swers and calls to ac­count. "When our role mod­els and pub­lic gov­er­nance sys­tems fail us, they leave a deep­er wound than any fi­nan­cial cri­sis," she said. "We need to re­turn to the ba­sic prin­ci­ples of right and wrong, where wrong­do­ing car­ries swift de­ter­mi­na­tion and penal­ties, so there is no ques­tion about our val­ues."