Prime Minister Patrick Manning will, on Tuesday, meet with Opposition Leader Basdeo Panday to discuss crime and constitutional reform among other issues of national importance but which are unlikely to include the woes of the depositors and shareholders of the Hindu Credit Union (HCU).

The Office of the Prime Minister announced in a news release yesterday that Manning and Panday will meet at the Diplomatic Centre, St Ann’s, ’to hold discussions on matters of national interest, namely, constitution reform and crime’. The release offered no further details.

Asked if he planned to raise the issue of the HCU and Government’s help, Panday said he does not plan to do so during his meeting with Manning.

’I do not know if protocol will allow this, regarding the fact that it is engaging the attention of Parliament. That matter has not been concluded,’ Panday said in a telephone interview yesterday.

Panday raised a motion on the HCU matter in the House of Representatives on Friday, which was Private Member’s Day. Discussions were not concluded when the proceedings ended on that day and is set to set to continue on the next Private Member’s Day later this month.

Panday said yesterday that Finance Minister Karen Nunez-Tesheira was ’missing the point’ he was trying to make in Parliament on the HCU matter while she was responding to his motion on Friday. Nunez Tesheira said that the ’major players’ in the HCU leadership were not levelling with the Government when it sought to help the credit union in April 2008.

’The point we are trying to make is that there is a moral responsibility on the part of the Government to deal with the matter... I wasn’t carrying any case on behalf of anybody else besides the shareholders and the depositors,’ Panday said.

As for his meeting with Manning on Tuesday, Panday said it was the prime minister who requested it during the Lower House sitting on Friday.

’He called me behind the Speaker’s chair and said that the prime minister and the leader of the Opposition should meet on national issues,’ Panday said.

Asked if he was surprised by Manning’s request, Panday said: ’That is usually the practice in most democratic countries that the leader of the Opposition and the prime minister should meet... As leader of the Opposition, I cannot refuse to meet with the prime minister on national issues if that is what he wishes.’

The last time Manning met with Panday was in mid-2006, which marked the end of a series of meetings that began in November 2005 to discuss the issue of crime.

Those discussions led to several pieces of legislation being amended to give the police commissioner more authority over the Police Service among other objectives, but Panday has consistently criticised the Government for failing to effectively deal with crime despite the Opposition’s support in the matter.

Panday said he had written Congress of the People (COP) political leader Winston Dookeran suggesting they meet with Manning to discuss key national issues such as crime, but the idea never came to fruition.

Contacted for comment yesterday, Dookeran said he wrote Manning and Panday earlier this year outlining the COP’s recommendations for dealing with the nation’s record-high level of serious crimes.

’He (Panday) replied saying that we should meet or something to that effect. That was not the issue. The issue was that they should have met,’ Dookeran said.