CARIBBEAN ROUND-UP
Manning, Panday to discuss new T&T president
PORT-OF-SPAIN — Prime Minister Patrick Manning and Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday are scheduled to meet later this week to consult on a new President of Trinidad and Tobago to succeed Arthur Robinson whose five-year term was extended for a year in March 2002.
Manning has requested the meeting with Panday after he had identified February 14 as the date for the electoral college to meet to choose the new president who functions as a non-executive head of state.
Nominations for a successor to Robinson must be submitted by February 7, one clear week ahead of the meeting of the House of Representatives and the Senate who form the electoral college.
Manning said he would like a “consensus” on the election of a new president as he was anxious to “de-politicise” the Office of President in the same way he regards the Office of Speaker of Parliament.
But, according to spokesman for Panday’s United National Congress, while the party was also interested in “a consensual approach” in determining who should be the next president, it was Manning who had originally introduced “a divisive dimension” when he opposed the election of Robinson under a then UNC-led administration.
Former principal of the University of the West Indies St Augustine Campus, Professor Max Richards, who was last year rejected by the UNC for the post of Speaker of Parliament, and is one of the prospective government candidates as president, has told the local media that he was personally in favour of the next president gaining “unanimous support to send the proper message (to the country)”.
Guyanese businessman murdered, another attacked
GEORGETOWN — As armed bandits continue their rampage of killings, robberies and violence along Guyana’s east coast villages, a businessman was Sunday murdered while another escaped from his attackers who torched his vehicle.
The slain businessman, Ralph Bassoo, was shot to death when a gang of five heavily armed gunmen stormed his business place and started to beat him and his wife.
Villagers reported that the gunmen were dressed “like policemen” and carried “long guns”.
Bassoo’s death on Sunday took the number of murdered victims to 24 over a 19-day period for this month.
A few miles way from the scene of the Bassoo tragedy, a fish vendor, Imram Khan, 34, was attacked by three armed men while driving along the Enterprise railway embankment road on his way to purchase fish for sale. He managed to escape from his car but his attackers set his car ablaze as he ran for his life.