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OPPOSITION Leader Kamla Persad-Bissessar urged voters to "riot with your voting finger" on election day as she addressed the UNC Labour town hall meeting in Couva on April 10.
Also present were former CWU head Clyde Elder (the UNC candidate for La Brea), former PSA head Leroy Baptiste, SWWTU head Michael Annisette, OWTU head Ancil Roget, NUGFW head James Lambert, plus UNC former senator Wade Mark and former Couva South MP Rudranath Indarsingh.
Accusing two government ministers – Prime Minister Stuart Young and Local Government Minister Faris Al-Rawi – of being busy recusing themselves some 210 times from Cabinet meetings which she alleged relat ed to contracts for family and friends, Persad-Bissessar hit, "You think they have time with you?"
Alleging poor public accounting to the tune of almost $3 billion by former finance minister Colm Imbert, she quoted his famous words on the public's complacency over fuel hikes, "They ain't riot yet."
Persad-Bissessar said, "Faris and his family as we see, almost $300 million in rent from the government. Can you believe that? Can you believe that? And all you ain't riot yet?
"Imbert laughing at you and laughing at you, sitting down in some big chair somewhere, grinning and skinning. 'And they ain't riot yet'?
"Well, on April 28 riot with your voting finger!"
Persad-Bissessar said the government over the past ten years had spent about $350 billion, yet was saying it was unable to find $7 billion to pay monies owed to workers.
Saying workers were TT's greatest resource, she said the country could not develop without investment in the people of TT.
"We created the UNC Workers Agenda which aims to restore prosperity to the working class.
"If paying workers is wrong, I don't want to be right!"
Earlier, she had said the UNC supports justice, equality and prosperity.
"We will work to make the lives of citizens better when you put us into government on April 28.
"This is intended to make your lives easier and more affordable."
She hit Young for promising "land, house, mortgage and everything under God's good heaven," as she quipped that the governing party's name, PNM, really stood for "Promises Never Materialise."
Persad-Bissessar cited recent remarks by Finance Minister Vishnu Dhanpaul – who is offering public servants a five per cent wage hike, not the ten per cent sought by the PSA – as she alleged the government has no intention to pay monies owed.
"Get the Hell out of there! And we will find the money to pay the workers! Move!"
She urged people to hold the government responsible for crime, high prices, the loss of 60,000 jobs, a four (or five) per cent wage-hike offer to public sector workers, and the loss of benefits to children such as laptops, textbooks, GATE and the Baby Milk Grant.
"I am going to bring back that Baby Milk Grant. I am a mother and a grandmother.
"The one thing is for the survival of our children."
Persad-Bissessar said, "A UNC government will renegotiate with our trading partners in the best interest of the people of TT."
She promised to resume $110 million in remaining payments from a European Union grant to compensate sugar cane farmers to transition out of that sector, accusing the Dr Keith Rowley administration of stymieing these. Saying the UNC was founded on a respect for democracy and social justice, she declared, "Never fear, Kamla is here!"
Earlier, Baptiste raised eyebrows by quipping that TT's thirty-something year olds were not merely a "Peter Pan generation" still living in their parent's home owing to non-affordability of housing, but were also a "Double Palm generation" by having to use the hotel chain to do adult activities.
The post Kamla: Riot with your voting finger! appeared first on Trinidad and Tobago Newsday.