Sascha Wil­son

Af­ter a long ab­sence from the po­lit­i­cal are­na, for­mer Peo­ples Na­tion­al Move­ment min­is­ter Pe­ter Tay­lor turned up the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) walk­a­bout in Moru­ga with his po­lit­i­cal guns trained at the Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley.

De­clar­ing his sup­port for UNC can­di­date for the Moru­ga/Table­land Con­stituen­cy Michelle Ben­jamin, Tay­lor minced no words as he ac­cused Row­ley of lead­ing the coun­try down a dan­ger­ous path.

“As you know I was the Mem­ber of Par­lia­ment for this con­stituen­cy and I al­ways said I will re­spond to what­ev­er call comes from the ground and there has been a very loud and deaf­en­ing call for Michelle Ben­jamin on my part.”

Tay­lor who served un­der as the 2007 PNM regime as MP for Princes Town South/Moru­ga and Le­gal Af­fairs Min­is­ter was seen greet­ing Op­po­si­tion Leader Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar as she ar­rived at the UNC’s con­stituen­cy of­fice in St Mary’s Vil­lage in Moru­ga on Wednes­day be­fore the walk­a­bout com­menced.

He made it clear that he would be fight­ing to en­sure the PNM is de­feat­ed at the polls. “It has been ten years since I have been last in the po­lit­i­cal are­na but when you look at where the coun­try has reached you have a prime min­is­ter that has em­braced a dic­ta­tor and is us­ing the na­tion­al pat­ri­mo­ny to fa­cil­i­tate that dic­tat­ing, breach­ing and cir­cum­vent­ing Unit­ed States sanc­tions.

My point, there­fore, is that the coun­try is fac­ing a very dan­ger­ous, dan­ger­ous threat and what we need is a coali­tion of the will­ing, men and women of the con­science who un­der­stand that if the Row­ley-led PNM is not re­moved from of­fice, in five years time we are not go­ing to recog­nise this place and worst you have him abus­ing even the PNM own con­sti­tu­tion.”

Claim­ing that for­mer prime min­is­ter Patrick Man­ning knew the dan­ger that Row­ley posed, he said his pur­pose is to en­sure that they learn from his­to­ry and do not re­peat the same mis­take as of 2015.

He ac­cused the prime min­is­ter and Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter Stu­art Young of be­ing dis­hon­est about the con­tro­ver­sial vis­it of Venezue­lan Vice Pres­i­dent Del­cy Ro­driguez af­ter the bor­ders were closed.

He was al­so crit­i­cal of the Prime Min­is­ter’s re­la­tion­ship with Venezue­lan Pres­i­dent Nico­las Maduro.

“He em­braces a dic­ta­tor not any dic­ta­tor a man who is un­der in­dict­ment by the Unit­ed States for nar­coter­ror­ism, drug traf­fick­ing, mon­ey laun­der­ing and the man whom the UN High Com­mis­sion­er for Hu­man Rights Michelle Bachelet told the world that this man has a hu­man rights vi­o­la­tion record longer than a PriceS­mart line on Christ­mas Eve and this is the man he em­braces and he is us­ing the na­tion­al pat­ri­mo­ny to en­able and fa­cil­i­tate that regime to cir­cum­vent US sanc­tions.”

He was shocked when the Prime Min­is­ter told the na­tion that Young was re­spon­si­ble for his suc­cess and po­lit­i­cal for­tunes. Tay­lor said the on­ly way the coun­try could ex­hale and have hope is if the PNM does not re­gain pow­er.