Govt rejects Penny’s 6/10 self-assessment

KAY-MARIE FLETCH­ER

Se­nior Re­porter

kay-marie.fletch­[email protected]

The Gov­ern­ment has strong­ly chal­lenged Op­po­si­tion leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les’ self-as­sess­ment of her first term lead­ing the Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment (PNM).

Re­spond­ing to Guardian Me­dia yes­ter­day, sev­er­al Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ters re­ject­ed Beck­les’ six out of ten rat­ing of her par­ty’s per­for­mance over the last year, dou­ble the score she gave to Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar.

While Beck­les ad­mit­ted that the PNM has more work to be done, sev­er­al min­is­ters and a sen­a­tor slammed the Op­po­si­tion’s analy­sis of its year-one per­for­mance.

En­er­gy and En­er­gy In­dus­tries Min­is­ter Roodal Mooni­lal said, “More like -6 out of 10 !!!”

Min­is­ter of Land and Le­gal Af­fairs and Min­is­ter in the Min­istry of Agri­cul­ture and Fish­eries, Sad­dam Ho­sein said, “The Op­po­si­tion Leader is be­ing gen­er­ous to her­self and her pick up side of a par­ty.”

Tak­ing an even stronger stance, Rur­al De­vel­op­ment and Lo­cal Gov­ern­ment Min­is­ter Khadi­jah Ameen said, “She’s a joke. I’m not even sure how many lead­ers that par­ty has right now. The UNC is a sol­id uni­fied par­ty that cel­e­brat­ed 37 years as a po­lit­i­cal par­ty to­day (Thurs­day). The PNM has no moral au­thor­i­ty to grade the PM, who is tasked with clean­ing up their mis­man­age­ment and cor­rup­tion. They have cre­at­ed tremen­dous hard­ship for the peo­ple of this coun­try while en­rich­ing them­selves. Miss Beck­les sat qui­et­ly in the for­mer gov­ern­ment and nev­er spoke out when crime was spi­ralling out of con­trol un­der Fitzger­ald Hinds, when the econ­o­my was floun­der­ing un­der Im­bert. She has ap­point­ed mem­bers in the Sen­ate af­ter its pub­lic knowl­edge that their fam­i­ly mem­bers ben­e­fit­ed to the tune of mil­lions in con­tracts and rent. I say to her, let the peo­ple of T&T breathe. They de­serve a break from PNM. You should hang your head in shame.”

And Par­lia­men­tary Sec­re­tary in the Min­istry of Sport and Youth Af­fairs, David Nakhid, said, “Delu­sion­al at best, dotish at worst!!!”

Mean­while, Po­lit­i­cal an­a­lyst Dr Shane Mo­hammed said he be­lieves a fair score of Beck­les’ per­for­mance as Op­po­si­tion leader would be a five out of ten.

In his view, Beck­les still has to con­vince some of her PNM mem­bers of her abil­i­ty to lead the par­ty for­ward.

Speak­ing to Guardian Me­dia via tele­phone yes­ter­day, Mo­hammed said, “I think it’s un­fair to say that the Gov­ern­ment is at three and she is at six. I think at the very min­i­mum,  be­cause she’s new, be­cause she has now start­ed her jour­ney as po­lit­i­cal leader, it’s al­so just one year, five would be fair com­pared to the eight for the Prime Min­is­ter... To be fair to every­body, I wouldn’t give her six. I’d prob­a­bly give her five be­cause there’s still peo­ple that need to be con­vinced even in the PNM, that she is worth her met­tle. As such, you can’t tell me she is out­rank­ing the Prime Min­is­ter... so it’s about per­for­mance. In­side the PNM, peo­ple don’t be­lieve that she has the ca­pac­i­ty, and she has to show the coun­try that she has the ca­pac­i­ty to lead the PNM.”

He al­so said it was im­por­tant to al­so com­pare Beck­les’ per­for­mance with for­mer op­po­si­tion lead­ers.

“When you com­pare it, one year for Dr Row­ley as op­po­si­tion leader in com­par­i­son to one year for Pen­ne­lope Beck­les as Op­po­si­tion leader, there’s a stark dif­fer­ence. As well as the first year for Mrs Per­sad-Bisses­sar as Op­po­si­tion leader, even in the first year as leader of the Op­po­si­tion, while the par­ty had gone through a tran­si­tion of changes, there still wasn’t a lev­el of dis­ar­ray that is hap­pen­ing in the PNM,” he said.

Mo­hammed added that Beck­les has shown a lack of abil­i­ty to be de­ci­sive about press­ing na­tion­al is­sues, and added that at present, she needs to make a de­ci­sion when it comes to Op­po­si­tion Sen­a­tor Jan­nelle John-Bates, who was re­moved from a PAAC af­ter be­ing ac­cused of com­pro­mis­ing the Com­mit­tee’s in­tegri­ty by us­ing “track changes” to ed­it a wit­ness state­ment for for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh.

He added, “It shud­ders me to think if the PNM was in pow­er, what would have been our for­eign pol­i­cy, and quite frankly, I’m sor­ry, neu­tral­i­ty is not an op­tion, not in a world where self-in­ter­est is at the fore­front of this po­lit­i­cal en­vi­ron­ment, and I am bas­ing that on the knowl­edge that pol­i­tics is about self-in­ter­est... PNM is now or­gan­is­ing, and even that is a hit and miss in some in­stances. The Gov­ern­ment has to seek the self-in­ter­est of Trinidad and To­ba­go, so it is in­con­sis­tent.”