NO TO RED HOUSE MOVE

What else does the Government need to convince it that Parliament should remain at the Red House? Already, there has been a public outcry against the evicting of Parliament from the building which has historically housed it, whether the House of Representatives and the Senate since this country achieved Independence or the Legislative Council when Trinidad and Tobago was still a British colony. Public Administration and Information Minister, Dr Lenny Saith, has admitted to the outcry against the move, yet the People’s National Movement Government which was put into power by the votes of the people is stubbornly refusing to listen to their protest against this clearly unpopular and needless decision. Even the House Committee, which includes Government Members of Parliament, has voiced dissatisfaction not only with the plan itself, but with the sites identified — one for temporary housing, the other for permanent housing of Parliament. Instead, it insisted [earlier this year] that Parliament should be “relocated internally.”

Dr Saith, despite stating in an interview with Newsday that if it was the House Committee’s decision not to move from the Red House temporarily, “then the Parliament stays there,” pointed out that the Government had a majority of members on the Committee, and it was expected that the earlier decision of the Committee would be reversed. And in the process the House Commitee would go along with the Cabinet decision which recommended that Parliament be removed from the Red House. But Dr Saith, however unintentionally, admitted by inference that there had been Government members on the House Committee, who had disagreed with the Cabinet decision and voted against it, expressing instead a preference for having the country’s Parliament remain in the same building which generations of nationals had always identified with it. Presumably, although Dr Saith did not voice this, the Government Members of Parliament, who had clearly voted for the status quo, will either be persuaded to change their minds on the issue or be replaced with others prepared to toe the Cabinet line. There would continue to be transparency, only this time the result would be in line with the wishes of Cabinet. In the end, regrettably, what the people wanted would take second place to what Cabinet had decided was good for them. And they are all of them honourable men! And women!

Evicting Parliament from the Red House to provide accommodation for the Prime Minister can not be considered a priority. The question has to be asked and not rhetorically: “Should the Administration or to be more precise, the Cabinet, not be concerning itself with clearly more important things than whether the Red House would make a better office for the Prime Minister than White Hall?” But then, as Dr Saith has politely explained, the important thing was to build something that the people could be proud of and, he declared not without obvious satisfaction, would move the Parliament into the 21st century. To that we add: Tim, tim.