Gonzales accuses Govt of trying to silence PNM

Gail Alexan­der

Se­nior Po­lit­i­cal Re­porter

Op­po­si­tion Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les has shrugged off Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s snip­ing at the fail­ure of his mo­tion in Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, and says he’ll re­file the mo­tion to de­bate the coun­try’s wa­ter sup­ply dis­rup­tions.

“I won’t al­low the Gov­ern­ment to run and get away as they’ve done,” Gon­za­les said dur­ing a me­dia con­fer­ence hours af­ter his mo­tion failed yes­ter­day.

“And the Prime Min­is­ter is an ab­sen­tee PM, and couldn’t come to Par­lia­ment for all of Sep­tem­ber...queen of the dumb­est Gov­ern­ment be­cause she sends her min­is­ters - up to Wednes­day this week - to in­voke Stand­ing Or­ders not to an­swer ques­tions or evade scruti­ny.”

He added, “She’s re­duced the Par­lia­ment to a cha­rade to avoid ac­count­abil­i­ty, es­pe­cial­ly when they can­not ex­plain se­ri­ous is­sues of gov­er­nance in T&T.”

This, af­ter Per­sad-Bisses­sar yes­ter­day poked fun at the fail­ure of Gon­za­les’ mo­tion in Par­lia­ment due to a pro­ce­dur­al lapse on his part.

“This has to be the dumb­est ver­sion of the PNM ever ...:” Per­sad-Bisses­sar said in a so­cial me­dia post.

Gon­za­les’ mo­tion failed be­cause he didn’t move the mo­tion by stat­ing “I beg to move” on con­clud­ing his ar­gu­ments.

Op­po­si­tion PNM Leader Pen­ny Beck­les-Robin­son al­so com­mit­ted a blun­der in No­vem­ber 2025 while pi­lot­ing a mo­tion. She read the text pre­sent­ing her mo­tion and in­stead of con­tin­u­ing on to de­liv­er the nec­es­sary ar­gu­ments sup­port­ing the mo­tion, she stat­ed, “I beg to move” - a phrase usu­al­ly sig­nalling com­ple­tion of a mo­tion.

Af­ter Par­lia­ment yes­ter­day, Gon­za­les said what tran­spired was un­for­tu­nate. Claim­ing the Gov­ern­ment used its ma­jor­i­ty to pre­vent the Op­po­si­tion from scru­ti­n­is­ing its lack of per­for­mance in the wa­ter sec­tor, he added, “I think it’s an­oth­er ex­am­ple of how our Par­lia­ment is be­ing man­aged ... an­oth­er ex­am­ple of the fact the Gov­ern­ment isn’t pre­pared to en­gage in se­ri­ous dis­course on is­sues con­cern­ing cit­i­zens’ lives.

“Why would the Gov­ern­ment not take the op­por­tu­ni­ty to re­spond af­ter I pro­vid­ed ev­i­dence that be­cause of their lack of fi­nanc­ing in ma­jor wa­ter sec­tor projects, our con­stituen­cies are now fac­ing the brunt of lack of wa­ter?”

He added, “But no in­vo­ca­tion of Stand­ing Or­ders would si­lence me or the Op­po­si­tion. If the Gov­ern­ment isn’t pre­pared to de­bate in Par­lia­ment and want to hide be­hind Stand­ing Or­ders, there are oth­er plat­forms and op­por­tu­ni­ties for those mat­ters to be pros­e­cut­ed - I plan on do­ing so.”

Claim­ing the Stand­ing Or­ders are be­ing utilised “in a way to sup­press dis­cus­sion on im­por­tant mat­ters” and there was a de­lib­er­ate at­tempt to si­lence the Op­po­si­tion, he added, “I warn Gov­ern­ment: you can­not hide be­hind the Speak­er’s chair or Stand­ing Or­ders.”

Gon­za­les said the Op­po­si­tion didn’t ob­ject when the Home­land Se­cu­ri­ty Min­is­ter didn’t sat­is­fy pro­ce­dures in re­cent mo­tions on act­ing ap­point­ments in the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice.

Say­ing he wasn’t crit­i­cis­ing the House Speak­er, Gon­za­les added, “But to­day, he doesn’t have a dis­cre­tion ... I don’t see that.

“Gov­ern­ment, in util­is­ing a tech­ni­cal­i­ty, hav­ing lis­tened to my con­tri­bu­tion and not be­ing able to re­spond to my ev­i­dence, what they’ve done col­lec­tive­ly, in­clud­ing the Pub­lic Util­i­ties Min­is­ter, is run. If they were pre­pared to de­bate this very im­por­tant mat­ter, they would have stood right there ... a bunch of cow­ards!

“If you feel you get away by run­ning away from an im­por­tant de­bate in Par­lia­ment - look out! I’ll con­tin­ue to pros­e­cute these very im­por­tant is­sues.”

Op­po­si­tion MP Kei­th Scot­land mean­while said the phrase “I beg to move” was al­ready used by Gon­za­les at the start of his mo­tion. He said the For­eign and Cari­com Af­fairs Min­is­ter (de­liv­er­ing a state­ment) al­so went be­yond his orig­i­nal 10 min­utes al­lot­ted by the same Stand­ing Or­der and the Speak­er gave him 20 sec­onds to wrap up.

“Didn’t he have the dis­cre­tion to give (Gon­za­les) 20 sec­onds to say, ‘I beg to move’ that takes five sec­onds,” Scot­land asked.