Opposition leader renews calls for unity

OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar reiterated the UNC’s call for people to unite against the PNM in the August 14 local government elections.

Addressing a UNC public meeting in Chaguanas on Monday, Persad-Bissessar said, “No fair-minded person throughout the length and breadth of Trinidad and Tobago is opposed to unity. Not one. Everyone wants unity.”

She added that many people desperately want to stop toting the burdens of this Government.

Persad-Bissessar said, “Hundreds of thousands of our friends, family and even political opponents have embraced ‘don’t tote, just vote.”

The UNC has formed an alliance with the National Transformation Alliance (NTA) for the elections.

The NTA’s political leader Gary Griffith is a former police commissioner and former national security minister in Persad-Bissessar’s former UNC-led People’s Partnership coalition government.

Last month, former UNC chairman Jack Warner announced he was joining this arrangement.

Warner is still facing extradition to the US for corruption charges relating to when he was FIFA’s vice president.

Persad-Bissessar said people must vote for the UNC on August 14 because it is “the only political party who stands for the poor and working class.”

These people, she continued, tote the heaviest burdens of the government.

She claimed that Government does not care about the children of these people.

Persad-Bissessar also accused the Prime Minister and some members of the business community of allegedly reducing a $500 baby milk grant that was implemented under the PP.

She claimed that Government has neglected young people.

Persad-Bissessar promised that the UNC would reinstate the land for the landless programme which existed under the PP, should it return to office in 2025.

“I want everyone to own a home.”

When the programme was closed in October 2017, then-housing minister Randall Mitchell said that the programme was not the panacea for helping people to own homes as Persad-Bissessar claimed.

Mitchell said the programme was only a residential lots programme.

He said until the PNM Government assumed office, “not one applicant had received a deed.”