PARSANLAL: THOMAS ADS ONLY FOR PUBLIC INFO
Trinidad Express

Port of Spain, August 11, 2008 -- Information Minister Neil Parsanlal said yesterday that the advertisements carried in the daily newspapers with facts on Grenada and its new Prime Minister Tillman Thomas were purely for public information purposes and nothing else.

"It was designed to put information in the public domain that no other organisation in the country, not least of all the media, was prepared to put," he said.

Taking issue with the frontpage headline in yesterday's Sunday Express, "Mr Show-off," and with the article, Parsanlal said he could not understand how an advertisement which presents information on Thomas and facts on Grenada could be perceived as Prime Minister Patrick Manning "showing off".

"The article lacked balance in terms of the persons who were invited to comment. We expect nothing different from Messrs (Basdeo) Panday, (Kelvin) Ramnath and Prakash Ramadhar (other than to condemn the ad)," he said, adding that as far as he was aware there was no attempt to reach the Prime Minister's office, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs or the Ministry of Information.

The Express did try to reach Parsanlal but calls to his cellphone went straight to voicemail and he did not return the reporter's message to return the call.

Furthermore, Parsanlal said the assertion in the article that the advertisement was taken out because there was alleged "bad blood" between the Prime Minister and Thomas was not true because such ads were also put out for the visit of the Ghanaian President John Kufuor about two weeks ago and the visit of the Nigerian President Olesegun Obasanjo in 2006.

Parsanlal said Government planned to issue the same kind of information on the 34 leaders/countries participating in the Fifth Summit of the Americas which takes place in April next year, as well as the 56 leaders/countries participating in the Commonwealth Heads of Government meeting which takes place next November. Both meetings will be held in Trinidad and Tobago.

"We would be bringing into the public domain information about any visiting leader because we want people to have an appreciation and an understanding of what will be taking place in the country over the next year. We want to provide hard data about leaders, who we see on television or we just hear about," he said. "Information is currency. And that is all there is to it. And if it is that the members of the Opposition don't share that view, we can understand that".

Addressing the Tillman Thomas ad specifically, Parsanlal stated: "The history of the Caribbean is evolving as we speak. And the Prime Ministers have been changed in several countries. We don't want to wait until that history is recorded, documented and published in a book somewhere. So we decided to put out information which is live and current and which can be used by students as well as by the general population and the media. So the people who are seeing it as the Prime Minister 'showing off' have therefore missed the entire point," he said.

He added that Trinidad and Tobago has a lot to be proud of in terms of its relationship with the rest of the Caribbean and the historical nexus between this country and Grenada runs deep.

And he added that if the Express felt "so outraged" by the "supposed show of vanity" it was free to refuse the advertising (in any forthcoming ads).