By SEAN DOUGLAS Friday, March 19 2010

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Kamla Persad-Bissessar...

LEADER of the Opposition Kamla Persad-Bissessar will today in the Lower House try to raise three matters/motions for debate: a Caricom summit in Trinidad next month, the Udecott board, and $35 million lawsuit against the State.

Persad-Bissessar reacted to Foreign Affairs Minister Paula Gopee-Scoon’s, admission at yesterday’s post-Cabinet news briefing of a Caricom meeting in April.

She told Newsday yesterday she was asking Speaker Barry Sinanan to debate the “summit of distraction” as a definite matter of urgent public importance. The matter, she said, related to the use of taxpayers money on a summit instead of on key public services such as water and hospital beds. Persad-Bissessar said there seemed to be no urgency to hold a summit, unless the Government has some new information about the region, but even as she noted it is not a summit about the pressing need for security in Trinidad and Tobago.

Told that the summit is due in the first half of April, she said this fell near to the April 9 date of her no-confidence motion in Prime Minister Patrick Manning.

“What’s the urgency of this matter?” she asked. “What regional issues have become so burning? They just met in Dominica.”

Persad-Bissessar also vowed to today to bring a matter on the adjournment of the House on the Udecott board, on the heels of the recent resignation of Udecott head Calder Hart.

She is also due to raise the case of Universal Products where alleged negligence had cost the State $35 million.