‘Business people want UNC in government’

OPPOSITION LEADER Basdeo Panday said recent outcries from the business community about the levels of crime in Trinidad and Tobago, prove that business people prefer to see the UNC in government instead of the PNM. Speaking at a news conference at his Port-of-Spain office yesterday, Panday said: “I appreciate the confidence of the business community. They believe we should have been running the government. So they are saying you are in the opposition but should really be in the government and you really be running the country.”

However Panday had harsh words “for those PNM stooges in the business community” who constantly claim that the Opposition is not cooperating with Government on the issue of crime. “They want the UNC to support an act (Kidnapping Act 2003) which creates a fourth offence in the whole history of our law which is non-bailable,” he declared.  Panday said the only non-bailable offences currently on the nation’s law books are murder, treason and piracy. “They (Government) want to add kidnapping. We don’t think by doing that you are going to help the problem. Merely making it a non-bailable offence is trying to fool people,” the UNC leader stated.

The Anti-Kidnapping Bill 2003 was made law on July 25, 2003, after extensive debates in both Houses of Parliament. The Bill was first introduced in the House of Representa-tives on March 14, 2003 by then Attorney-General (now TT High Commissioner to the United Kingdom) Glenda Morean. The UNC leader reiterated that the Opposition would not support the Police Reform Bills unless there is constitutional reform in TT and there will be no further talks on that subject with the Government because Prime Minister Patrick Manning was not serious about it. Panday also said former New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani’s crime plan would not work without constitutional reform. He said corruption existed in the Police Service while the UNC was in office and “some (reports to that effect) came to me personally. Panday said the UNC “could not have done anything” about that problem because it was restricted by the current Constitution. He claimed that if the Government listened to the Opposition, constitutional reform in TT could be achieved in three months.