To­day’s meet­ing of the Elec­toral Col­lege on the Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ at­tempt to try to re­move Pres­i­dent Paula-Mae Weekes, comes as Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters ac­cuse the UNC of at­tack­ing the coun­try’s Con­sti­tu­tion and send­ing it in­to tur­moil.

The points on the state of the na­tion were made by At­tor­ney Gen­er­al Faris Al-Rawi and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Fi­nance Bri­an Man­ning dur­ing Tues­day’s PNM meet­ing in San Fer­nan­do, where the rul­ing par­ty con­tin­ued on the of­fen­sive against the Op­po­si­tion.

Works Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan al­so ad­mit­ted “peo­ple are a lit­tle on edge” cur­rent­ly.

Both po­lit­i­cal sides have been on the war path more than usu­al on mat­ters re­lat­ing to the Prime Min­is­ter, Pres­i­dent and Po­lice Ser­vice Com­mis­sion.

The meet­ing pre­ced­ed this morn­ing’s sit­ting in Par­lia­ment, where the Op­po­si­tion hopes to get the votes need­ed to set up a tri­bunal to in­ves­ti­gate the Pres­i­dent to­wards re­mov­ing her from of­fice over the PSC is­sue.

The Gov­ern­ment has de­fend­ed the Pres­i­dent in re­cent state­ments and Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley on Tues­day an­swered nine ques­tions the Op­po­si­tion had de­mand­ed replies to. He then made a pub­lic ap­peal to Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar to with­draw the mo­tion to pre­vent stain­ing T&T’s rep­u­ta­tion.

Row­ley, in full cry on the is­sue, in­di­cat­ed he’d take his team in­to Par­lia­ment to­day to deal with the mat­ter.

But yes­ter­day, Op­po­si­tion MP and UNC chair­man Dave Tan­coo said the mo­tion won’t be with­drawn. He claimed while the Prime Min­is­ter is im­pli­cat­ed in the mat­ter, the Pres­i­dent is at the heart of it.

“We’re call­ing on pa­tri­o­tism and in­de­pen­dence of thought in the vote (to­day), so Sen­a­tors and Min­is­ters can vote for trans­paren­cy and truth.”

There will be no de­bate but sim­ply a vote from mem­bers of the Up­per and Low­er Hous­es. It will re­quire two-thirds of the to­tal mem­bers to pass the mo­tion—48 votes. The PNM has a to­tal of 38 from its MPs and Sen­a­tors, UNC 25 from its to­tal, and there are nine In­de­pen­dent sen­a­tors. The lat­ter were all ap­point­ed by the Pres­i­dent.

At Tues­day’s PNM meet­ing Al-Rawi not­ed the nu­mer­ous events used by the UNC to speak about the mat­ter.

“We have some who seek to tell a sto­ry that de­fies lan­guage, log­ic, rea­son and ju­rispru­dence of the Con­sti­tu­tion,” Al-Rawi said.

He said there had been at­tacks on the Prime Min­is­ter that he should have no con­sul­ta­tion with the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent, and there should be run­ning com­men­tary and “the PM should livestream his con­ver­sa­tions with the Of­fice of the Pres­i­dent.”

“Any­one look­ing on from out­side will feel some­thing is wrong in T&T,” Al-Rawi said, ask­ing which coun­try in Cari­com or the Com­mon­wealth has a sit­u­a­tion to say a Pres­i­dent had done some­thing so se­ri­ous and ought to be re­moved.

Mean­while, Man­ning al­lud­ed to tur­moil in the coun­try, adding that his fa­ther — late PNM leader Patrick Man­ning — would have said ‘Fear no evil.’

He added that his fa­ther had said the Op­po­si­tion lacked the po­lit­i­cal skills ex­pe­ri­ence, train­ing and acu­men to gov­ern the coun­try.

“He pre­dict­ed they’d have been a dis­as­ter and they have been just that…she who claims to be the moth­er of the na­tion has shown she doesn’t have what it takes to lead.”