For­mer UNC Min­is­ter Vas­ant Bharath has laud­ed UNC leader Kam­la Per­sad- Bisses­sar's lead­er­ship af­ter she reached out to him putting dif­fer­ences aside - and he's slammed Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley’s Gov­ern­ment.

Bharath did so when he spoke at Fri­day's UNC Bud­get con­sul­ta­tion in Tu­na­puna. It was his first ap­pear­ance on a UNC plat­form in some time.

One­time UNC St Au­gus­tine MP, Bharath un­suc­cess­ful­ly con­test­ed the lead­er­ship against Per­sad-Bisses­sar in 2015 and 2020 and sub­se­quent­ly was dis­tanced from the par­ty. Re­cent­ly he's been crit­i­cal of both UNC and PNM. Up to last month Bharath spoke of con­sid­er­ing launch­ing a po­lit­i­cal par­ty.

At Fri­day's Bud­get con­sul­ta­tion, Bharath, sit­ting at the head ta­ble was in­tro­duced by UNC’s Ham­lyn Jailal as “our for­mer Min­is­ter of Food Pro­duc­tion and Trade.”

De­tail­ing chal­lenges and the col­lapse in many sec­tors, Bharath said T&T has a very se­ri­ous chal­lenge on its hands, “And there’s no hope the cur­rent PNM regime can over­come it, they’ve proven over and over in the last nine years that they’re cor­rupt, vin­dic­tive, dis­crim­i­na­to­ry. God for­bid they get an­oth­er term- they’re go­ing to be far worse. So we have to band to­geth­er, go out there and be evan­ge­lists for T&T."

He said he knew many were won­der­ing how he’d ar­rived on a UNC plat­form that night. He said Per­sad-Bisses­sar had been very mag­nan­i­mous in reach­ing out to him.

“She's been able to put what­ev­er dif­fer­ences we have with each oth­er aside to the ben­e­fit of the good of the cit­i­zens and that’s what true lead­er­ship is – when you put coun­try and peo­ple of the coun­try be­fore any per­son­al dif­fer­ences,” Bharath added, "I thank her and ap­plaud her for that.”

Bharath is­sued a state­ment on the de­vel­op­ment im­me­di­ate­ly af­ter the meet­ing.

He stat­ed, "I'm hap­py to be work­ing close­ly with the lead­er­ship of the UNC to strength­en our par­ty and serve the best in­ter­ests of our na­tion. Over the last few months, I've re­flect­ed deeply on the chal­lenges we face as a coun­try and the ur­gent need for ef­fec­tive lead­er­ship.

"The UNC has a proud his­to­ry of de­liv­er­ing pos­i­tive re­sults for T&T. Un­der Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s lead­er­ship, whose ap­proach has al­ways been to place peo­ple at the heart of our poli­cies, en­sur­ing every cit­i­zen has the op­por­tu­ni­ty to thrive, we im­ple­ment­ed vi­tal projects and poli­cies that fos­tered safer com­mu­ni­ties and a more pros­per­ous econ­o­my."

Cit­ing strides he said the UNC made, Bharath added, "My past dif­fer­ences with the UNC lead­er­ship pale in com­par­i­son to the per­va­sive is­sues that plague the coun­try un­der the in­com­pe­tent and cor­rupt hands of the PNM which has been in gov­ern­ment more than any oth­er par­ty, and which has con­sis­tent­ly fall­en short of the ex­pec­ta­tions of our peo­ple, achiev­ing less in their over 40 years in gov­ern­ment than the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tions of 1995-2001 and 2010-2015.

"The PNM lacks ac­count­abil­i­ty and fis­cal man­age­ment, has al­lowed crime to reach record highs, and has failed to main­tain our ba­sic in­fra­struc­ture. Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar has demon­strat­ed the ul­ti­mate lead­er­ship by set­ting aside per­son­al dif­fer­ences for the sake of our coun­try and has asked me to join hands to re­build our na­tion to­geth­er."

"I'm de­ter­mined to work col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly to re­build trust, de­vel­op a ro­bust strat­e­gy, and get the par­ty ready to chal­lenge the PNM. We must re­store faith in our in­sti­tu­tions, cre­ate eco­nom­ic growth, and en­sure a safe and se­cure en­vi­ron­ment for all. It's im­per­a­tive we present a unit­ed front, of­fer­ing hope, and tan­gi­ble so­lu­tions to the chal­lenges we face," he said.

Bharath slams PM on crime

Ad­dress­ing the con­sul­ta­tion, Bharath said de­spite over $500 bil­lion spent on T&T’s Bud­gets in the last nine years, qual­i­ty of life hasn’t im­proved. He de­tailed “a tale of two deaths” – on se­cu­ri­ty and the econ­o­my.

He said many don’t have wa­ter, se­cu­ri­ty, shel­ter or oth­er ba­sics, "We’re at a stage of al­most help­less­ness, numb to the atroc­i­ties when we see five and six peo­ple killed in a day or the head­lines … All we hope is that it doesn’t hap­pen to us.

"We have a po­lice ser­vice where the TTPS head missed her call­ing - she should have been a pas­tor….no clue what to do to re­solve T&T’s prob­lems on crime. Our de­tec­tion rate is 15 per cent, con­vic­tion rate is three per cent."

He said the num­ber of mur­ders since 2015 is 4,402, as of Thurs­day there were 341 mur­ders for 2024 and 60 for Ju­ly ex­clud­ing ex­tor­tions, rapes and rob­beries.

Bharath said he read where Row­ley said peo­ple were not re­port­ing crime, “This man had the au­dac­i­ty and gall to say that ?!! Why would any­body re­port crime? When you go to the sta­tion, you know who is po­lice and who is ban­dit?,” Bharath asked, adding sta­tis­tics showed even those in jail are “call­ing shots.”

“So why are you re­port­ing any­thing. You stu­pid? Our wit­ness pro­tec­tion pro­gramme doesn’t work, how many have been killed? When peo­ple see any­thing they close their win­dow, duck­ing down.”

Bharath said, “The PNM Gov­ern­ment’s so­lu­tion to what's hap­pen­ing in T&T with crime was to team up 'Coalpot (Kei­th) Scot­land - the man who said go and use coalpot - with (Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Fitzger­ald) Hinds. So if you were fright­ened be­fore, you have to be more fright­ened now, the most in­com­pe­tent min­is­ter!”

'The 2025/26 Bud­get must be a UNC govt bud­get'

UNC's Vas­ant Bharath on Fri­day rec­om­mend­ed hav­ing all se­cu­ri­ty agen­cies op­er­ate col­lab­o­ra­tive­ly and have spe­cialised TTPS units to deal with gangs, cy­ber­crime, hu­man traf­fick­ing, guns and am­mu­ni­tion.

He said the Gov­ern­ment said they knew where the gangs were, but video blog­ger Chris Huges had to come from Cana­da and found gang mem­bers but was charged by po­lice.

"It’s be­cause they don’t want to do any­thing!”

Bharath said T&T was rack­ing up debt and af­ter the to­tal debt the PP gov­ern­ment left in 2015 was $77 bil­lion it took nine years for $50 bil­lion to be added. He slammed the Gov­ern­ment’s with­drawals from the Her­itage and Sta­bil­i­sa­tion Fund to­talling (US)$2.559 bil­lion and not­ed a $ 9 bil­lion deficit for the cur­rent Bud­get. He crit­i­cised Cen­tral Bank’s “cock and bull sto­ry” on the lack of liq­uid­i­ty in the sys­tem af­ter re­duc­ing the re­serve re­quire­ment for banks.

Bharath said debts will chal­lenge fu­ture gen­er­a­tions, busi­ness­es are clos­ing, there is a Forex cri­sis and one of con­fi­dence in T&T, for­eign in­vest­ment is stay­ing away, lo­cal busi­ness is ham­pered, cap­i­tal flight abounds and rev­enue earned out­side is kept there. He said T&T can­not feed it­self and af­ter 100 years with the en­er­gy sec­tor. “God for­bid if a world war aris­es and ships bring­ing en­er­gy here are di­vert­ed – T&T will shut down.”

Bharath called for ac­tion to en­sure the 2025/26 Bud­get af­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion is read by a UNC gov­ern­ment. An­oth­er speak­er, for­mer PP min­is­ter Kevin Ram­nar­ine said it was good to see Bharath. Au­di­ence mem­bers al­so wel­comed him.