Movement for Social Justice leader David Abdulah says T&T can expect more allegations and controversies as government continues with its attempts to shift away from critical issues of governance. Abdulah urged citizens not to be swayed by diversions, “noise and chatter” away from the real issues in the controversy involving former attorney general Anand Ramlogan, Police Complaints Authority director David West and former national security minister Gary Griffith.
Abdulah, addressing a media conference yesterday at the party’s headquarters in St Joseph Village, San Fernando, said the legitimacy of the Peoples’ Partnership regime “continues to be brought into serious question.” “There will be many more allegations being made in the future because of the nature of this government. The manipulation, the abuse of office, trying to use the loopholes of the law. More is going to come,” Abdulah said.
He said the call by Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar, on Monday, for President Anthony Carmona to remove West was “unwarranted.” He said, after that call for the last six days the media has been focusing “not on the alleged wrongdoing by Mr Ramlogan, but has been focused on the whistleblower, so to speak, Mr David West.”
He said the issue has been kept alive by the revelations by Griffith of other ministers being implicated in an attempt to have him withdraw his statement. Government, he said, has attempted to weave a web of deception and now the Government is “tangled up in it (the web of deception)” and the Prime Minister is at the centre of that entanglement.
“The Government is attempting to, with all this chatter and all this noise, have the population of T&T take their eyes of the ball and lost sight of the real issue, which is, what Mr Ramlogan is alleged to have done,” Abdulah said. Abdulah said he was unfazed by yesterday’s UWI/Ansa Mc AL Psychological Research Centre poll which gave him a one per cent popularity rating for the Prime Minister.
He said he was not in a popularity contest and what should be of concern is one third of the poll had rejected both Persad-Bissessar and Rowley.
MSJ-OPPOSES CEMEX/TCL BUY-OUT ATTEMPT
Abdulah also raised serious objection to any attempt by Mexican transnational cement firm Cemex to increase its shareholding in Trinidad Cement Ltd. Abdulah urged shareholders against passing that resolution, since it will give Cemex, which already has 20 per cent, the opportunity to force a take-over of TCL.
“We oppose the resolution for the removal of that 20 per cent cap. We do not agree with the loss of important assets that have been acquired by people in the region over a long period of time,” he said. He said if Cemex gets 39 or 40 per cent it would force a takeover, according to stock market rules. The MSJ leader added that if Cemex is allowed to take ownership of TCL there will be job losses in T&T and the company’s Barbados and Jamaica cement factories.