Rowley: PM taking population for fools
Opposition Leader Dr Keith Rowley is not buying Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar’s statement that neither she nor the People’s Partnership manifesto ever promised to reduce the pensionable age to 60 years.
“What the Prime Minister is trying to do is revise the election campaign,” Rowley said yesterday.
“The Prime Minister is taking the population for fools, because we all took part in the election campaign or followed the campaign. I don’t know why they think they could fool us on this issue.
“What they said, what was recorded, what was offered, was quite clear. What the Prime Minister is saying now is quite different, and is untruthful and disappointing. And it is an attempt to get away from a commitment that they made and one that they now feel that they have to back away from. Nothing will change that.”
Noting that Persad-Bissessar was saying “it wasn’t me” (who made the pension promise), Rowley said that statement simply said that what she was saying as an individual, was different from what the party said.
“The Prime Minister is not separate and apart from her party or her Government. According to her line of reasoning, since we can deal with what she said as against what the party said, we can now expect 29 different positions from the People’s Partnership members of Parliament, because they each can speak about what they said individually.
“And that is the kind of foolishness that is being offered as governance. We don’t accept it and we would hold them to the commitment they made.”
Rowley said he was disappointed that the Prime Minister could “so openly and nakedly” associate herself with statements made by her press secretary Garvin Nicholas. And they are both saying the same thing which can be easily refuted”.
He said there was no difficulty or confusion arising out of the People’s Partnership election advertisement which appeared making this very pledge the Prime Minister is now trying to disassociate herself from.
“There was no confusion. It was a clearly understood position, accepted and committed and understood. It is crystal clear what it was all about. They are trying to revise the election campaign,” he said.
Stating that the promise to reduce the pensionable age to 60 was not made “en passant”, he asked: “How do they expect to escape from that?”
“It all boils down now to ‘can we trust these people’ and the answer is no,” he said, adding that it was time that Government owned up to what they had offered to the electorate, but failed to honour. (Trinidad Express)