Beckles: Where is the Prime Minister?

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les has ques­tioned the ab­sence of Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar from a press con­fer­ence held to­day, say­ing the pub­lic rea­son­ably ex­pect­ed the Prime Min­is­ter to ap­pear and ad­dress mat­ters of na­tion­al im­por­tance.

In a state­ment post­ed to so­cial me­dia, Beck­les said the me­dia and pub­lic in­stead faced two Min­is­ters who ap­peared un­able to pro­vide clear an­swers on key na­tion­al is­sues.Beck­les said Trinidad and To­ba­go “can­not be ex­pect­ed to ac­cept a Prime Min­is­ter who seems un­will­ing to make her­self avail­able to the me­dia and, more im­por­tant­ly, to the peo­ple she was elect­ed to serve.”

She crit­i­cised what she de­scribed as a poor­ly ex­e­cut­ed press con­fer­ence by the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress, which she said ap­peared de­signed to dis­tract the pop­u­la­tion with “friv­o­lous and cheap po­lit­i­cal rhetoric” on is­sues re­lat­ing to the Hous­ing De­vel­op­ment Cor­po­ra­tion, rather than ad­dress­ing se­ri­ous na­tion­al con­cerns.

She said the Gov­ern­ment re­quired re­mind­ing that the Gen­er­al Elec­tion held in April car­ried an oblig­a­tion to gov­ern for all cit­i­zens. Ac­cord­ing to Beck­les, con­fu­sion arose when mem­bers of the me­dia ques­tioned the Prime Min­is­ter’s where­abouts. She said Min­is­ter Sean Sobers strug­gled to ex­plain why the brief­ing took place at the UNC head­quar­ters, say­ing it was be­cause the lo­ca­tion was “cen­tralised.”

She added that Sobers lat­er said the Na­tion­al Se­cu­ri­ty Coun­cil was meet­ing, be­fore al­so as­sert­ing that he was a mem­ber of that Coun­cil, which she de­scribed as con­fus­ing at best and deeply mis­lead­ing at worst. Beck­les said while Sobers sug­gest­ed the Prime Min­is­ter did not need to ad­dress the na­tion be­cause “no one in Trinidad feels un­safe,” the pub­lic was still owed an­swers.

She list­ed sev­er­al ques­tions she said re­mained unan­swered, in­clud­ing the sta­tus of air­ports and de­layed or can­celled flights, the rea­son for streets be­ing cor­doned off in Port of Spain, Trinidad and To­ba­go’s po­si­tion on CARI­COM and re­cent re­gion­al de­vel­op­ments, re­la­tions with the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly Chief Sec­re­tary on na­tion­al se­cu­ri­ty mat­ters, and is­sues re­lat­ing to in­ter­na­tion­al law and the UN Char­ter.

Beck­les said the press con­fer­ence end­ed abrupt­ly when David Lee brought the brief­ing to a close and de­clined fur­ther ques­tions from the me­dia. “So the ques­tion re­mains. Where is Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar?”