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Lifesport, Scholarships and Meeting of Community Leaders
Posted: Tuesday, July 29, 2014

By Stephen Kangal
July 29, 2014


It would appear that the PP's infamous and corruption-riddled Lifesport, the PNM's $55 Secret Scholarship Programme and Manning's dining, wining and meeting with the criminal fringe dubbed as community leaders all have a connecting thread of secrecy, favouritism, gaining electoral spin-offs and rewarding the criminal element to a lesser extent.

Is it not strange and deja-vu that the PP regime, prodded by the investigations incited and revealed by Minister Devant Maharaj under the banner of the Equity Council made heavy political weather and rightfully so on the PNM's corrupt secret scholarship program administered by former Minister Joan Yuille Williams. The PP discredited the meeting that Manning held with community leaders at the Holiday Inn and hung these two issues as an albatross around the neck of the PNM.

The PP is now guilty as charged of fraternising with criminals, giving them secretly over $400 m in one grand feeding frenzy that makes the PNM's secret scholarship programme look like a tea party.

Crime in T&T pays because you just have to be, according to Minister Roberts, a little black boy guilty of law-breaking, larceny and other crimes and you will be rewarded handsomely especially if you patronize the Carapo mosque.

It is being telescoped to little Indian boys that they have to commit crimes if they want to be rewarded by the state in another feeding frenzy. Being on the side of the law does not pay in T&T for this group. The same for the cane-farmers who are being deprived of their $400m payment made available by the EU to tide them over the closure of the industry.

At least the Secret Scholarship programme had something to show even if it was doled out to black boys and girls with some measure of academic merit but how can more than $400M be dispensed secretly under a veil of corruption, graft, law-breaking, infringement of public service procedures and enrichment of officials who administered the programme with nothing to show by the way of rehabilitation or crime reduction.

Was Lifesport disguised and designed as a continuation of campaign inducement and financing alleged by losing PNM candidate, Mrs K. Nunez-Tesheira in MP Roberts constituency (D'Abadie/O'Meara) in the 2010 elections?

This issue is a big one. It cannot be restricted to the ministerial stewardship of Minister Roberts. It tarnishes the whole government especially since alliances were made with the criminal element to pillage the treasury.

More to come from the revelations of URP and CEPEP scandals because Lifesport may be the proverbial tip of the ice-berg that may on the cusp of sinking PP ship.

Eid Mubarak Greetings

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