Stephon Nicholas

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

The Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) is deny­ing cul­pa­bil­i­ty over the five-year stag­na­tion of the Buc­coo Reef Ma­rine Park Bill.

Dur­ing de­bate in Par­lia­ment on Fri­day, Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar crit­i­cised the for­mer gov­ern­ment for not bring­ing the bill to the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives.

She was re­spond­ing to a ques­tion from the Op­po­si­tion about what mea­sures the Gov­ern­ment in­tends to im­ple­ment to re­duce reck­less be­hav­iour in the ma­rine park.

This comes in the wake of an April 8 in­ci­dent, in which a a jet ski en­tered a bathing-on­ly zone at Pi­geon Point beach and struck and killed sev­en-year-old An­gel­i­ca Jo­gie from Bar­rack­pore, Trinidad, as she was va­ca­tion­ing with her fam­i­ly.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the bill “would have helped to ad­dress mat­ters such as these, but those on the oth­er side sat on that bill for ten years or more, un­til last year, and nev­er act­ed on that bill.”

The ma­rine park bill was passed by the then PNM-led To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA) in No­vem­ber 2020 and sent to Cab­i­net in Jan­u­ary 2021.

In an in­ter­view with Guardian Me­dia on Sat­ur­day, for­mer leader of gov­ern­ment busi­ness Camille Robin­son-Reg­is blamed the Pro­gres­sive De­mo­c­ra­t­ic Pa­tri­ots (PDP) and the To­ba­go Peo­ple’s Par­ty (TPP) for why the PNM failed to bring the bill to Par­lia­ment. The PNM had ten con­sec­u­tive years in of­fice from 2015-2025.

She said the bill was re­ferred to the Leg­is­la­tion Re­view Com­mit­tee of the Cab­i­net but got stuck in abeyance af­ter the two THA elec­tions in 2021.

The Jan­u­ary 2021 THA elec­tions saw an un­prece­dent­ed six-six tie be­tween the PNM and PDP. It was lat­er bro­ken af­ter the con­sti­tu­tion was amend­ed to in­crease the num­ber of elec­toral dis­tricts in To­ba­go to 15.

Robin­son-Reg­is said, “In De­cem­ber 2021, an­oth­er THA elec­tion was held, the PDP won and that ad­min­is­tra­tion showed no in­ter­est in pur­su­ing the bill that had been pro­posed by the pre­vi­ous ad­min­is­tra­tion and con­se­quent­ly did not re­quest that it be brought to the Par­lia­ment.”

Asked whether the PNM need­ed in­put from the PDP to ad­vance the bill, she replied, “Giv­en that it had been passed by the PNM-led ad­min­is­tra­tion it would have been a PNM pol­i­cy, con­se­quent­ly if the PDP did not have the same pol­i­cy then the bill would not go for­ward.”

She said the PDP ad­min­is­tra­tion, which lat­er be­came the TPP af­ter an in­ter­nal rift, nev­er passed a sim­i­lar bill in the as­sem­bly.

But Deputy Chief Sec­re­tary Dr Faith Breb­nor, who was a PDP coun­cil­lor when the bill was passed, rub­bished the ra­tio­nale by Robin­son-Reg­is.

She said the bill was de­bat­ed and passed unan­i­mous­ly by the THA in 2020 with the sup­port of the Mi­nor­i­ty Coun­cil.

“It was the last de­bate we had be­fore the pro­rogu­ing of the House,” she said, not­ing the PNM Ex­ec­u­tive Coun­cil re­mained in of­fice un­til los­ing the THA elec­tions in De­cem­ber.

She said no elect­ed mem­ber of the PDP dur­ing the elec­tion stale­mate was asked whether they still sup­port­ed the ma­rine bill.

“Since com­ing in­to of­fice in De­cem­ber 2021, the PNM-led cen­tral gov­ern­ment, as far as I am aware, did not reach out to the THA to de­ter­mine whether we still held firm to the tenets as es­poused by that bill. So in­di­cat­ing they did not know or we had a dif­fer­ent pol­i­cy is disin­gen­u­ous to say the least.”