Trinidad PM: No postponement of Local Elections

(Trinidad Guardian) Spec­u­la­tion by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) and the Move­ment for So­cial Jus­tice (MSJ) that the Gov­ern­ment will post­pone Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Elec­tions has been rub­bished by Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

“I keep hear­ing some of my col­leagues in the Par­lia­ment and else­where talk­ing about post­pon­ing and rig­ging the elec­tion. That is just hot air from peo­ple who have noth­ing else to say,” Row­ley told the me­dia out­side the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) of­fice in San Fer­nan­do yes­ter­day.

He said there was nev­er any in­ten­tion to post­pone the elec­tion. Al­though he did not an­nounce the date for elec­tions, he said the pop­u­la­tion can rest as­sured that it will be held in the ap­pro­pri­ate time frame. He said the cur­rent term ends in No­vem­ber. He, along with Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Kaz­im Ho­sein, Fi­nance Min­is­ter Colm Im­bert, Works and Trans­port Min­is­ter Ro­han Sinanan, Plan­ning and De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Camille Robin­son-Reg­is and Hous­ing and Ur­ban De­vel­op­ment Min­is­ter Ed­mund Dil­lon were on hand for the sec­ond day of the PNM’s screen­ing of lo­cal gov­ern­ment can­di­dates.

Yes­ter­day’s screen­ing saw a mix­ture of in­cum­bent coun­cil­lors and per­sons seek­ing pub­lic of­fice in the San Fer­nan­do, Point Fortin and Siparia re­gion­al cor­po­ra­tions. On Sat­ur­day, the par­ty start­ed screen­ing in San­gre Grande.

“This is a process we are ac­cus­tomed to. We al­ways have an ex­am­i­na­tion of our can­di­dates; in­cum­bents and new as­pi­rants. It is usu­al­ly, how should I say, ex­pec­tant per­sons and per­sons in po­si­tions ex­pect to be re­turned. New ones ex­pect to re­place them and where we do have a va­can­cy we fill them.

“This is an in­ter­view as part of the process in the con­sti­tu­tion where we have a screen­ing com­mit­tee made up of per­sons who hold spe­cif­ic of­fices in the con­stituen­cies and the gov­ern­ment to nom­i­nate. That time has now passed and so we can be­gin to screen and try to se­lect the best can­di­dates for the PNM to re­tain our po­si­tion in lo­cal gov­ern­ment and con­tin­ue to con­tribute to na­tion­al de­vel­op­ment.”

But MSJ po­lit­i­cal leader David Ab­du­lah be­lieves the Prime Min­is­ter will give an elec­tion date that will fall af­ter the na­tion­al bud­get is pre­sent­ed in Par­lia­ment. Ab­du­lah be­lieves that the bud­get will be filled with elec­tion good­ies and called on the pop­u­la­tion not to be fooled by this.