Mark: Govt can’t call local polls yet

PRIME MINISTER Patrick Manning cannot call Local Government Elections in Tri-nidad and Tobago until two major legislative obstacles are cleared out of the way by Parliament. This was the view expressed yesterday by United National Congress (UNC) chairman and Senate Opposition Leader, Wade Mark. At a People’s National Movement (PNM) public meeting in St Augustine on Saturday, speculation was rife that Manning would announce the date for those polls, but no such announcement was forthcoming from the Prime Minister.

Mark told Newsday that Manning knew he could not announce an election date because of two legislative hurdles standing in his way.  The first of these is the Municipal Corporations Amendment Bill 2003 which comes up for debate in the Upper House tomorrow. The UNC chairman said Parliament must also debate a report from the Elections and Boundaries Commission to increase the number of local government seats from 124 to 126 and a redrawing of the boundaries for 50 electoral districts in Trinidad. He added that until these matters have been dealt with, no local government elections can be held. Mark claimed that Cabinet had illegally extended the life of  local government bodies.

The UNC chairman further alleged that the PNM had already started a campaign to give the ruling party “an unfair electoral advantage” over the Opposition in the upcoming elections. He claimed initiatives such as the On-The Job-Training (OJT) and the Community Environmental Protection and Environmental Programmes were being used by the PNM to campaign for the local government elections and assess PNM-UNC support in the various electoral districts.   “People are coming to the conclusion that Manning is not the Prime Minister of Trinidad and Tobago, he is the Prime Minister of the PNM,” Mark declared.