Beckles hits back after Prime Minister attacks PNM on crime

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ac­cused Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar of politi­cis­ing na­tion­al tragedy, re­spond­ing di­rect­ly to a so­cial me­dia post in which the Prime Min­is­ter at­tacked the Peo­ple’s Na­tion­al Move­ment over crime and gang vi­o­lence.

PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar, in an ear­li­er tweet, asked: “Why does the PNM hate our cit­i­zens but love the lo­cal drug mafia?” and went on to out­line what she de­scribed as crime sta­tis­tics from 2015 to 2025.

In the post, the Prime Min­is­ter said that un­der for­mer Prime Min­is­ter Dr Kei­th Row­ley, Prime Min­is­ter Stu­art Young and Beck­les, the coun­try record­ed 124,062 crimes, in­clud­ing 5,000 mur­ders and near­ly 9,000 rapes and sex­u­al as­saults. She said rapists, mur­der­ers and vi­o­lent gangs flour­ished un­der the PNM.

PM Per­sad-Bisses­sar al­so said the ma­jor­i­ty of mur­der vic­tims over the past decade were young Afro men, while most vic­tims of gang vi­o­lence and as­saults were young Afro adults and teenagers. She added that com­mu­ni­ties most af­fect­ed by vi­o­lent gangs were Afro-dom­i­nat­ed com­mu­ni­ties with­in PNM strong­hold con­stituen­cies.

She ac­cused the PNM, which she de­scribed as an Afro-dom­i­nat­ed par­ty, of block­ing ac­tion by the se­cu­ri­ty ser­vices to as­sist those com­mu­ni­ties and said the par­ty’s lead­er­ship ap­peared more con­cerned with pro­tect­ing what she called “lo­cal drug-mafia fi­nanciers.”

Beck­les re­ject­ed the Prime Min­is­ter’s claims and ac­cused her of ex­ploit­ing suf­fer­ing for po­lit­i­cal pur­pos­es.

“Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar, when will you stop play­ing pol­i­tics with tragedy? Tens of thou­sands of cit­i­zens have suf­fered un­der your watch while you chase head­lines and ped­dle lies. The peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go de­serve lead­er­ship, not spin, ex­cus­es, threats and the­atrics.”