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Saturday, July 19, 2025

How politicians spent Christmas Day

by

2032 days ago
20191226

Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley who is spend­ing Christ­mas in To­ba­go with his fam­i­ly, said that he hopes to es­cape the reg­i­men­ta­tion of his sched­ule and di­et dur­ing this sea­son that he loves and par­tic­u­lar­ly shar­ing it with fam­i­ly. His Christ­mas wish for T&T is peace pros­per­i­ty, safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty.

Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar spent the day with her hus­band Gre­go­ry, son and grand­chil­dren. They en­joyed Christ­mas din­ner last night with close friends. She hopes that while Tri­nis share black cake and sor­rel, they will al­so spare a thought for the less for­tu­nate and com­mit to be­ing kind, com­pas­sion­ate and lov­ing in 2020.

Af­ter an ex­treme­ly busy year of pi­lot­ing and op­er­a­tional­is­ing leg­is­la­tion and sev­er­al hec­tic weeks push­ing the mar­i­jua­na de­crim­i­nal­i­sa­tion law, At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi shed his le­gal ac­cou­trements tem­porar­i­ly yes­ter­day.

“I es­pe­cial­ly look for­ward to spend­ing time with fam­i­ly at Christ­mas, par­tic­u­lar­ly our tra­di­tion of a San Fer­nan­do Christ­mas with my mom and the en­tire fam­i­ly. There’s noth­ing like a good old San Fer­nan­do Christ­mas,” he said.

Ruth Av­enue—named af­ter his grand­moth­er Ruth Seuk­er­an—the cen­tre point of yes­ter­day’s ac­tion.

“It’s where gen­er­a­tions of peo­ple come to­geth­er,” he said.

“Wish­ing every­one sea­son’s greet­ings. I say to have hope that de­liv­ery comes. In the dif­fi­cult cir­cum­stances when we as­sumed Gov­ern­ment a lot of re­form mea­sures were painstak­ing­ly im­ple­ment­ed but there will be means of sat­is­fy­ing the hunger in­clud­ing a boom ahead on the ground, not just in Fer­nan­do West. To col­leagues, es­pe­cial­ly in Op­po­si­tion, I ask for some com­mon sense and pray for the spir­it of good sense and for us all to do our part.”

It’s ba­by’s first Christ­mas for new dad­dy Op­po­si­tion MP Bar­ry Padarath whose sev­en-month-old ba­by girl was the fo­cus of at­ten­tion.

“I wish for Trinidad and To­ba­go a new UNC Gov­ern­ment led by a com­pas­sion­ate, sound-mind­ed ra­tio­nal prime min­is­ter—Kam­la Per­sad-Bissses­sar—and I hope to serve a large slice of hum­ble pie to PNM col­leagues in the year ahead.”

Plan­ning Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is was up at the crack of dawn to or­gan­ise yes­ter­day’s events as she spent Christ­mas with her hus­band, 12-year-old twin daugh­ters and her 93-year-old moth­er.

“I wish Trinidad and To­ba­go a peace­ful year with a sense of coun­try as our Prime Min­is­ter says, with bound­less faith in our des­tiny, and I look for­ward to reach­ing our 2030 goals. Each year we progress, you know it, you can see it. Trinidad and To­ba­go is bet­ter off than many coun­tries. Even IMF re­ports have not­ed Trinidad and To­ba­go’s stan­dard of liv­ing is bet­ter off than over 100 oth­er coun­tries. There’s a lot to be grate­ful and hope­ful about.”

A lot of eat­ing was on the sched­ule at Op­po­si­tion MP Dr Roodal Mooni­lal’s house.

“Mrs Mooni­lal and our son spent a lot of the morn­ing open­ing umpteen gifts un­der the tree, en­joy­ing home­made bread with cake, jam and cream, then open­ing more gifts and re­lax­ing watch­ing Christ­mas movies. There was an af­ter­noon snooze, more movies and in be­tween a 100 calls to ex­change Christ­mas greet­ings,” he said.

“For my Gov­ern­ment col­leagues, I take care of every­one who gives me a lot of at­ten­tion. I wish Mr Hinds a scale to mea­sure 30 grammes for his gift. For Mr Young, who’s been very at­tract­ed to me, a loud bull­horn, For the AG, a Sav­ile Row suit with match­ing tow­el for breast pock­et and for the PM a tick­et to go shop­ping at a Hol­land mall which I’ve fi­nal­ly found.”

Good food was the cen­tre­piece of cel­e­bra­tions at the home of Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter Robert Le Hunte. His fam­i­ly, in­clud­ing his 86-year-old moth­er and his wife, sam­pled a mix­ture of T&T food and dish­es from Ghana.

“My wife is from Ghana and we try to have both in­clud­ing a pop­u­lar dish called jollof rice which is some­thing like our pelau. We’ll be ring­ing in the New Year in St Lu­cia,” he said.

“To all my col­leagues, gov­ern­ment and op­po­si­tion, I wish health and strength. I al­so share with you my per­son­al mot­to: ser­vice to hu­man­i­ty, which I hope we’ll all be able to stand by in 2020.”

Christ­mas­ing north to south is how Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Dr David Lee spent the day, which in­clud­ed at­tend­ing church with his moth­er, break­fast with fam­i­ly and a tra­di­tion­al Christ­mas din­ner

“I wish Trinidad and To­ba­go and all cit­i­zens and col­leagues a blessed Christ­mas. To my Gov­ern­ment col­leagues, I hope we can work to­geth­er hand in hand and build a bet­ter Trinidad and To­ba­go. I’m hap­py for the lit­tle break we have while Par­lia­ment re­lo­cates to the Red House and look for­ward to start­ing the last nine months of the term there.

“How­ev­er I put the Gov­ern­ment on no­tice they wouldn’t get a free pass from us on any­thing. We sup­port­ed a lot of law in 2019 in­clud­ing the $100 note changeover and I still be­lieve there should be an ex­ten­sion of the De­cem­ber 31 dead­line for this.”

New­ly in­stalled chair­man of the Diego Mar­tin Re­gion­al Cor­po­ra­tion Symon De No­bre­ga’s day was spent not on­ly with fam­i­ly but Cor­po­ra­tion col­leagues en­sur­ing a par­tic­u­lar as­pect of the job got done.

“I wish to all my col­leagues on all sides the spir­it of love and com­pas­sion. If we serve the peo­ple and serve Trinidad and To­ba­go, then we’re all on the same side. That’s how I ap­proach life. Christ­mas is a time of new be­gin­nings and light. I hope we all take it in­to the new year.”

Cou­va South MP Rudy In­dars­ingh was es­pe­cial­ly glad his moth­er was shar­ing Christ­mas with his wife and two chil­dren since she was ill re­cent­ly.

“My col­leagues on both sides of the House I wish all of the best but I know my Gov­ern­ment col­leagues would un­der­stand if they don’t get good wish­es from the 63, 633 work­ers—yes, we worked it out with CSO, labour and oth­er sta­tis­tics—who have lost jobs this term but 2020 will be year for many new things.”

He’s over the pneu­mo­nia he re­cent­ly had and Health Min­is­ter Ter­rance Deyals­ingh is back to his busy sched­ule, which in­clud­ed meet­ing the Christ­mas ba­bies born at the Port-of-Spain and Mt Hope hos­pi­tals and sup­port­ing health­care work­ers who were on the job on Christ­mas Day,

“To all my col­leagues, let’s take mea­sures to pro­tect our health and don’t let job stress get you. Take some down­time. For 2020, let it all be about phys­i­cal, men­tal and spir­i­tu­al health for all,” he said.


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