Opposition slams PM over shifting explanation on US troops

DA­REECE PO­LO

Se­nior Re­porter

da­reece.po­[email protected]

Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is de­mand­ing clar­i­ty from the gov­ern­ment af­ter Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar re­versed her ac­count of why US mil­i­tary per­son­nel are in Trinidad and To­ba­go. Speak­ing out­side the Red House yes­ter­day, Beck­les ques­tioned why nei­ther To­ba­go’s Chief Sec­re­tary nor the wider pub­lic had been con­sult­ed, say­ing the Gov­ern­ment’s shift­ing ex­pla­na­tions have fu­elled anx­i­ety rather than eased it.

She point­ed to vis­i­ble ac­tiv­i­ty on the is­land and raised con­cerns over whether the En­vi­ron­men­tal Man­age­ment Au­thor­i­ty was ever ap­proached for the manda­to­ry ap­provals and pub­lic con­sul­ta­tions. Beck­les com­pared the Gov­ern­ment’s ap­proach to that of Grena­da, where the prime min­is­ter pub­licly in­vit­ed feed­back on sim­i­lar re­quests from US of­fi­cials. She said that lev­el of trans­paren­cy should have been adopt­ed.

Pressed on whether the radar in­stal­la­tion could strain re­la­tions with Venezuela, Beck­les said the Prime Min­is­ter must ad­dress the na­tion di­rect­ly, not­ing that cit­i­zens ap­pear to be learn­ing more about the sit­u­a­tion from for­eign news out­lets and US Sec­re­tary of State Mar­co Ru­bio than from their own gov­ern­ment.

“A lot of the in­for­ma­tion that we are re­ceiv­ing is through CNN, through BBC, through Mar­co Ru­bio. Even as it re­lates to what’s hap­pen­ing with the marines that are here, I mean, they (Venezuela) were the ones that make ref­er­ence to Trinidad be­ing oc­cu­pied by the marines.”

Mean­while, Op­po­si­tion Chief Whip Mar­vin Gon­za­les in­ten­si­fied the crit­i­cism, ac­cus­ing the Prime Min­is­ter of mis­lead­ing the coun­try on the US–Venezuela mat­ter. He con­demned Gov­ern­ment min­is­ters for in­vok­ing par­lia­men­tary stand­ing or­ders when­ev­er ques­tioned, in­sist­ing the ad­min­is­tra­tion has evad­ed ac­count­abil­i­ty.

“This demon­strates that the Prime Min­is­ter is a patho­log­i­cal liar. The Prime Min­is­ter has nev­er been forth­with with this coun­try on these mat­ters in­volv­ing the Unit­ed States of Amer­i­ca and Venezuela... She’s the leader of the Gov­ern­ment that has not been forth­right on this very mat­ter. And her min­is­ters, who come to Par­lia­ment and are asked crit­i­cal ques­tions on these very im­por­tant mat­ters, con­stant­ly in­voke stand­ing or­ders of the Par­lia­ment to not ac­count to you, the cit­i­zens of Trinidad and To­ba­go. So, they are ob­vi­ous­ly fol­low­ing in vain with the Prime Min­is­ter, and I am not sur­prised that she had to do an about-turn, a flip-flop. She should be em­bar­rassed, she should apol­o­gise to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go for not be­ing forth­right and per­haps bla­tant­ly ly­ing to the pop­u­la­tion on this very im­por­tant mat­ter.”

Gon­za­les said he un­der­stands that To­bag­o­ni­ans are “trau­ma­tised” by the un­fold­ing sit­u­a­tion, point­ing to the THA Chief Sec­re­tary’s ad­mis­sion that he was nev­er briefed on the ar­rival of US per­son­nel. He warned that the pub­lic should be “very con­cerned” over the lack of trans­paren­cy and re­peat­ed calls for the gov­ern­ment to com­mu­ni­cate open­ly about its de­ci­sions.