NAR condemns attack on Sir Ellis

THE National Alliance for Reconstruction (NAR) yesterday claimed that an attack on former President of Trinidad and Tobago, Sir Ellis Clarke, showed that “there is a total breakdown in governance” in the country under the PNM. Sir Ellis was mugged and robbed by a group of men as he was about to leave his Maraval home on Saturday to attend a function at UWI’s School of Continuing Studies in St Augustine. Addressing the party’s national council at Victoria Square, Port-of-Spain, NAR deputy leader Dr Carson Charles condemned the attack on Sir Ellis and claimed that it showed that the PNM could not guarantee the safety of any citizen. “What else can you achieve if you can’t provide security for the people?” he asked.

Declaring that providing an environment of security for citizens was the fundamental responsibility of any government, Charles said: “In that regard, the PNM has been an absolute failure.” Charles claimed that no minister in the current administration was serious about his or her duties and Education Minister Hazel Manning seemed to be confused about her roles as a Minister and Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s wife. The NAR deputy leader accused the PNM of taking no responsibility for helping Tobago recover from the damage it suffered from Hurricane Ivan and placing too much focus on Grenada.

Charles hoped that Grenadian Prime Minister Dr Keith Mitchell will not dole out the $10 million in aid which TT has provided to that nation. He said that aid should be invested in order to restart old industries in Grenada and to start new ones. NAR leader Lennox Sankersingh lamented that Government never accepted the party’s suggestion to use the local government bodies to assist the police in tracking down kidnap victim Vijay Persad who has been missing now for 100 days. He also claimed that Government’s green paper was “useless” and the proposed Community Improvement Company alluded to by Manning, will simply be another version of CEPEP and URP and will undermine the authority of local government bodies.