Prime Minister Rowley’s remarks at the Post Cabinet Media Briefing (Thursday 20th October 2016)

Good afternoon members of the media, good afternoon to the listening public.

As you will be aware, we have been, for the last few weeks, very engaged in the business of preparing the National Budget. That budget was delivered very successfully and then we went through the processes of the Parliament which saw the budget debate ending and we’ve had five (5) days of examination of the line items and that came to a conclusion yesterday evening. So the budget is now on to the Upper House having been successfully passed in the Lower House.

But my main reason for coming to you this afternoon, over and above providing an opportunity for you to raise with me one or two matters which might be of concern to you and the national public which I would want to address through you, is to inform you that I have today advised the President to issue a writ for the Local Government Election (LGE) and that nomination for Local Government would be Monday November 7th and LGE will take place on Monday November 28th.

So that now puts us into another period of heightened activity.

One of the main considerations for having the election as quickly as possible, to get it out of the way, is so that the country can focus on the business of coping with our challenges, whatever they might be and to get the whole question of elections and ups and downs and distractions out of the way.

And hopefully, by the turn of a new year, we will be able to focus very specifically and undistracted(ly) on the development programme which we hope will be in full gear going into the new year and would allow us to make our best efforts to bring about some economic growth in the economy and also to face down this persistent criminal onslaught which makes the news on a daily basis.

So we want to get the elections out of the way and get on with the other business of management of the State’s affairs.