Beckles questions funeral’s ‘clash’ with her Budget reply

Akash Sama­roo

Lead Ed­i­tor-Pol­i­tics

akash.sama­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is ques­tion­ing whether the tim­ing of Slinger “Mighty Spar­row” Fran­cis­co’s state-as­sist­ed fu­ner­al on Oc­to­ber 16 is an at­tempt by the Gov­ern­ment to di­vert pub­lic at­ten­tion from her re­sponse to the na­tion­al Bud­get, which is sched­uled for the same day.

While stop­ping short of di­rect­ly ac­cus­ing the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress (UNC) ad­min­is­tra­tion of de­lib­er­ate­ly sched­ul­ing the fu­ner­al to co­in­cide with her par­lia­men­tary con­tri­bu­tion, Beck­les said, “One can on­ly hope that even the UNC, des­per­ate as they are, would not stoop so low as to use the death of a cul­tur­al icon to shore up their po­lit­i­cal fail­ure. Some things are big­ger than pol­i­tics, and ca­lyp­so and cul­ture should rank high among them. May Spar­row rest peace­ful­ly.”

Beck­les is sched­uled to de­liv­er the Op­po­si­tion’s re­sponse to the 2027 na­tion­al Bud­get in the House of Rep­re­sen­ta­tives on Oc­to­ber 16.

Oc­to­ber 16 was al­so the date orig­i­nal­ly se­lect­ed by sev­er­al trade unions for a ma­jor demon­stra­tion against the Gov­ern­ment in the cap­i­tal.

How­ev­er, Na­tion­al Trade Union Cen­tre gen­er­al sec­re­tary Michael An­nisette con­firmed yes­ter­day that the unions have agreed to post­pone their march to Oc­to­ber 23 out of re­spect for Spar­row.

An­nisette said the de­ci­sion fol­lowed com­mu­ni­ca­tion from the T&T Po­lice Ser­vice about the fu­ner­al arrange­ments, but stressed the po­lice had not in­struct­ed the unions to change their plans.

Mean­while, Beck­les in­sist­ed she re­mains un­de­terred and that the Op­po­si­tion’s mes­sage will be heard re­gard­less of the cir­cum­stances.

“As Leader of the PNM, I am laser-fo­cused,” she de­clared.

“Try as they might, the PNM and the peo­ple of T&T will NOT be si­lenced. Our mes­sage will be heard loud and clear across the length and breadth of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

Beck­les al­so ac­cused the UNC ad­min­is­tra­tion of pre­sid­ing over na­tion­al chaos and col­lapse, warn­ing that the Gov­ern­ment would ul­ti­mate­ly face the con­se­quences at the polls.

“Noth­ing can dis­tract from the re­al­i­ty of the chaos and col­lapse fac­ing our coun­try un­der this Gov­ern­ment,” she said.

“The UNC can run, but they can­not hide; they will reap their just re­ward for the wicked­ness per­pe­trat­ed up­on the cit­i­zens at the next Lo­cal and Gen­er­al Elec­tions.”

Beck­les pro­vid­ed no ev­i­dence that the fu­ner­al date was de­lib­er­ate­ly se­lect­ed to co­in­cide with her Bud­get re­sponse.