A good year for PM and the boys

OPPOSITION UNC Member of Parliament for Oropouche, Dr Roodal Moonilal, in responding to Prime Minister Patrick Manning’s view that 2004 was a good year for the country, said it was a good year indeed for Manning and his Cabinet. “When the Prime Minister says 2004 was a good one, he surely meant that it was a good year for members of his Cabinet who all benefited at the taxpayers’ expense, yet failed miserably to provide basic goods and services to the population,” Dr Moonilal said. He added that 2004 was, in his opinion, the year of “flood and blood,” in which thousands of citizens either suffered the ravages of floods to their homes, crops and livelihood, or fell under the bandit’s bullet.

The former UNC Govern-ment minister expressed the view that this year brought sadness to many families, as the country faces a record-breaking murder rate which yesterday stood at 257. “Indeed, 2004 has been a troubled year with suffering, pain and anguish which befell countless citizens,” Mooni-lal said. “In fact, the criminal class has done well in 2004,” Moonilal quipped. “It is abundantly clear the PNM, (Prime Minister) Manning and Martin Joseph cannot and will not stop the criminal elements,” he added. Moonilal said the time was fast coming when “we will have to return our country” to normalcy.

However, Moonilal said that all was not lost. He said the New Year was the ideal time to rebuild society. He suggested the rebuilding exercise be done on “shared values of equality, understanding and unity.” Moonilal slammed recent statements by Works and Transport Minister Franklin Khan, who said that a possible cause for recent flooding in Central and South Trinidad, was the deterioration of the ozone layer. Moonilal described Khan’s ozone layer explanation as “the height of unaccountability.”