FOR the next two years this country has a significant role to play as the former host of the Commonwealth Heads of Government Meeting (CHOGM) and the Opposition intends to use it to its advantage.

According to St Augustine MP Vasant Bharath, ’Trinidad and Tobago is the chair of the Commonwealth for the next two years and that means that this country now has the ability to have a significant input in what happens within the Commonwealth.’

Bharath, along with leader of the Opposition party, the United National Congress (UNC), Basdeo Panday, yesterday met with Secretary General of the Commonwealth, Kamalesh Sharma, to discuss the party’s position on climate change at the Hyatt Regency hotel, in downtown Port of Spain.

’The document we compiled emanated out of press conference talks about the high level issues, such as food security issues, women issues and renewable energy and we did a synopsis of those issues and presented it to him as we did to all of the world leaders who were here,’ he added.

While Sharma was not willing to speak to the media about the letter or the specific role this country would have to play, Bharath said ’he did say that he would read the letter’.

On the other hand, the first thing the Opposition wants is to clearly understand what the role entails.

’We have got to speak to the Government and understand what the role of the chair really means because even we as members of parliament didn’t know that there was a role to be played for the next two years, because as the secretary general was saying, a lot of ideas that are heeded in the Commonwealth comes from the people in the countries. Therefore it will give the population an opportunity to feed in their ideas about all different types of things,’ he said.

-Aabida Allaham