Two days af­ter the Gov­ern­ment and Au­di­tor Gen­er­al seemed to be at log­ger­heads over an er­ror de­tect­ed in T&T’s 2023 rev­enue da­ta, Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar threat­ened to take Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s ad­min­is­tra­tion to court over the mat­ter. She said bil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ dol­lars can­not be ac­count­ed for and some­one must an­swer.

Last Fri­day, a Gov­ern­ment mo­tion to ex­tend the time to present in­for­ma­tion to the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al was passed in Par­lia­ment af­ter Au­di­tor Gen­er­al Jai­wantie Ram­dass al­leged­ly re­fused to ac­cept in­for­ma­tion seek­ing to cor­rect a $2.6 bil­lion un­der­state­ment of T&T’s rev­enue for 2023.

Gov­ern­ment, at one point, sent the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al a pre-ac­tion pro­to­col let­ter but that al­so failed and the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al pub­lished T&T’s ac­counts for 2023 mi­nus the cor­rect fig­ures. This led to Gov­ern­ment’s mo­tion.

The mo­tion, which was in Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert’s name, stat­ed that it was nec­es­sary, in re­spect of the fi­nan­cial ac­counts for 2023, that the pe­ri­od of time spec­i­fied un­der Sec­tions 24 and 25 of the Au­dit and Ex­che­quer Act (69.01) be ex­tend­ed.

The mo­tion was passed by 19 Gov­ern­ment votes to the 14 Op­po­si­tion votes.

Five UNC MPs—Ani­ta Haynes-Al­leyne, Rod­ney Charles, Rush­ton Paray, Di­nesh Ram­bal­ly and Dr Rai Rag­bir were not present when the votes were tak­en.

Had all 19 UNC MPs vot­ed, the mo­tion would have been de­feat­ed.

Yes­ter­day, at the UNC’s 35th an­niver­sary, in­ter­faith ser­vice in Ch­agua­nas, the Op­po­si­tion Leader said she had no in­ten­tion to dwell on Fri­day’s brouha­ha but felt com­pelled to speak on the is­sue. 

She said the Gov­ern­ment came as a “thief in the night” in­form­ing them that they are go­ing to de­bate a mo­tion to ex­tend the time of the Au­di­tor Gen­er­al to pre­pare the ac­counts of T&T and for it to be sub­mit­ted in Par­lia­ment “by sev­er­al months.”

The Au­di­tor Gen­er­al re­port of 2023, she said, had al­ready been com­plet­ed and was sit­ting on a ta­ble in Par­lia­ment for it to be laid fol­low­ing which it would have be­come a pub­lic doc­u­ment for the pop­u­la­tion to see the state of the coun­try’s fi­nances.

How­ev­er, when the Speak­er called on Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert to lay the doc­u­ments he re­fused to budge.

This mo­tion was on the Or­der Pa­per.

“So first they vi­o­lat­ed our Con­sti­tu­tion by re­fus­ing to lay the doc­u­ment. They have al­so vi­o­lat­ed the Con­sti­tu­tion by ex­tend­ing the time.”

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, “I serve no­tice to­day ... Mr Im­bert and the Gov­ern­ment of Trinidad and To­ba­go we will take you to the cour­t­house ... to get that re­port made pub­lic.

“God does not sleep. What hap­pens in the dark comes up in the light.”

In that re­port, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said she was told: “They have a $7 bil­lion deficit”

She said the Gov­ern­ment spent bil­lions of tax­pay­ers’ mon­ey which they could not ac­count for.

“They have bil­lions that they claim­ing that they have ... that they don’t have. It was a trick to hide the re­port so the pub­lic would not find out the mas­sive fi­nan­cial wrong­do­ing that is tak­ing place.”

Soon enough, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, all would be re­vealed.

“I am say­ing that we will fight them out­side Par­lia­ment and we will take them to the cour­t­house where it is nec­es­sary.”