Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

The Op­po­si­tion Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) will open gen­er­al elec­tion nom­i­na­tions for all 41 seats in Trinidad and To­ba­go next month, says Op­po­si­tion leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, who has al­so main­tained she'd like to have NTA leader Gary Grif­fith at the an­ti-crime talks with the Gov­ern­ment.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar spoke at last night's re­sump­tion of UNC Mon­day Night Re­port at Cou­va South's Mul­ti-Pur­pose Hall.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said that as the UNC pre­pares to en­ter the gen­er­al elec­tion year, the UNC opens nom­i­na­tions in De­cem­ber for all gen­er­al elec­tion seats in T&T.

"If as some of the guys say, you name man or woman, you're free to put in your nom­i­na­tion form. So we're look­ing for can­di­dates for the gen­er­al elec­tion when­ev­er called but next year is an elec­tion year and we must start off on a strong foot­ing to go for­ward," she added.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar said though the UNC con­test­ed 31 few­er seats than the PNM in the Au­gust Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment elec­tion, the par­ty won 43,000 more votes and every mar­gin­al seat.

"We'll con­tin­ue the work and you'll vote again for safe­ty and se­cu­ri­ty," she said.

Cit­ing re­ports on the crime sit­u­a­tion and "peace talks", Per­sad-Bisses­sar said, "You're han­dling them with kid gloves; what the hell you should be do­ing is lock­ing them up and putting them be­hind bars. T&T is a killing field now!"

Re­it­er­at­ing her re­sponse to Prime Min­is­ter Kei­th Row­ley's state­ment on the an­ti-crime talks, Per­sad-Bisses­sar said the per­son who chairs Cab­i­net and the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil must deal with TT's most ur­gent and hor­ri­fy­ing prob­lem, "Why are you braks­ing, duck­ing and hid­ing?!"

Per­sad-Bisses­sar who said she'd like to see Grif­fith as a stake­hold­er in the talks, not­ed he'd been her Peo­ple's Part­ner­ship Gov­ern­ment's Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter and Row­ley's Po­lice Com­mis­sion­er.

"So what's wrong? The man has ex­pe­ri­ence."

"Row­ley hasn't replied (to my let­ter) as he has no an­swer. I sent rec­om­men­da­tions but you re­move all of that and on­ly want to deal with leg­is­la­tion. We have so many. What more leg­is­la­tion do you want," she asked, adding the UNC sup­port­ed the An­ti-Gang law.

"In­stead you're 'mak­ing love' to gangs when you should be lock­ing them up. When­ev­er Row­ley is ready to clar­i­fy the is­sues raised and at­tend, I'll meet you any­where any­time."

"I'm not in­sult­ed by Row­ley duck­ing and hid­ing but cit­i­zens are in­sult­ed. I un­der­stand he's in­se­cure with many ir­ra­tional fears...but I be­lieve we should work to­geth­er for the greater good. But they clear­ly don't want to ex­plain to the coun­try why they're re­fus­ing to work with stake­hold­ers or for the Prime Min­is­ter to at­tend. Who am I sup­posed to speak to at the meet­ing if he doesn't at­tend? A ghost?"

"They're trav­el­ling all over the world beg­ging for help but re­fus­ing to meet our lo­cal stake­hold­ers. They don't want to talk to peo­ple but we will," she said adding, UNC will have an­ti-crime con­sul­ta­tions with the pub­lic.

$34.6m spent to pre­serve re­fin­ery since 2018

UNC deputy leader Dr Roodal Mooni­lal who said the mur­der toll is of­fi­cial­ly 516, called for an in­de­pen­dent probe of al­leged "peace deals" on whether any TTPS unit has agree­ment with gangs.

He ac­cused Row­ley of blovi­at­ing yes­ter­day and suf­fer­ing from "li­a­betes". "Talk­ing for two hours, yet couldn't say what achieve­ments will come from the Sau­di Ara­bia trip."

UNC deputy leader Jear­lean John said, "The on­ly thing go­ing up is Row­ley's fre­quent fli­er ac­count and the mur­der rate.. young black men dy­ing on the streets! Ex­pend­able, be­cause he doesn't care. The 'Colour Me Or­ange' pro­gramme start­ed un­der Patrick Man­ning PNM. When you com­pare Man­ning to Row­ley, Man­ning made per­fect sense!"

UNC deputy leader David Lee said a Free­dom of In­for­ma­tion re­quest shows Gov­ern­ment paid Damus $34.6m to pre­serve the Petrotrin re­fin­ery be­tween De­cem­ber 1, 2018, when the re­fin­ery was closed to June 2023. Not­ing next week marks the fifth an­niver­sary of Petrotrin's clo­sure, Lee said Paria Fu­el Trad­ing hired UWI to as­sess the im­pact/ef­fects which the re­fin­ery's clo­sure had on Pointe-a-Pierre com­mu­ni­ties.

UNC MP Rudy In­dars­ingh not­ed the Paria Com­mis­sion of In­quiry re­port in­to the deaths of the four LM­CS divers will be de­liv­ered to the Pres­i­dent on No­vem­ber 30.

He called for Row­ley to en­sure it's laid in Par­lia­ment and sent to the Di­rec­tor of Pub­lic Pros­e­cu­tions "and let the chips fall where they may if any­one is cul­pa­ble of neg­li­gence!"