The fu­ture of one of Trinidad and To­ba­go’s most icon­ic hos­pi­tal­i­ty land­marks has be­come the lat­est flash­point in a bit­ter war of words be­tween the Op­po­si­tion and the sit­ting ad­min­is­tra­tion.

For­mer fi­nance min­is­ter Colm Im­bert is sound­ing the alarm over the po­ten­tial ex­it by the Hilton Ho­tel chain, ac­cus­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) Gov­ern­ment of ad­min­is­tra­tive paral­y­sis and "ram­pant nepo­tism."

Speak­ing to re­porters at the Op­po­si­tion's me­dia brief­ing yes­ter­day, Im­bert said the pre­vi­ous Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM) gov­ern­ment had al­ready cleared the path for a long-term re­new­al with the glob­al brand. Ac­cord­ing to Im­bert, the cur­rent cri­sis is a di­rect re­sult of the new ad­min­is­tra­tion "drop­ping the ball" on crit­i­cal re­fur­bish­ments and lease ne­go­ti­a­tions.