Political spat over John-Bates’ fate continues

Jesse Ramdeo

Se­nior Re­porter

[email protected]

Prime Min­is­ter Kam­la Per­sad-Bisses­sar says Op­po­si­tion Leader Pen­ne­lope Beck­les is “the last one to talk about ques­tion­able char­ac­ters” with­in the Unit­ed Na­tion­al Con­gress’ (UNC) ranks.

The Prime Min­is­ter’s re­sponse came a day af­ter Beck­les called on her (Per­sad-Bisses­sar) to leave her alone re­gard­ing her de­ci­sion on the fate of Sen­a­tor Janelle John-Bates, say­ing the PNM leader should in­stead “deal with her own prob­lems.”

Beck­les made the com­ment dur­ing the PNM’s Sports and Fam­i­ly Day in Port-of-Spain on Sun­day.

Ad­dress­ing the con­stant calls for her to act on John-Bates res­ig­na­tion of­fer, in­clud­ing from the UNC, Beck­les said while every­one want­ed to hear what she would do about John-Bates—now be­fore Par­lia­ment’s priv­i­leges Com­mit­tee—the UNC has ap­point­ed peo­ple who have ques­tions to an­swer, in­clud­ing deputy leader David Lee, Sen­a­tor Anil Roberts and oth­ers.

“The re­spon­si­bil­i­ty to ap­point PNM sen­a­tors is mine. So let Kam­la deal with her prob­lems and de­cide on the ap­point­ment of her sen­a­tors. But if you com­fort­able ap­point­ing those peo­ple with ques­tion­able char­ac­ter­is­tics, leave me alone. When the time comes for me to act as the Con­sti­tu­tion re­quires, I’ll act,” Beck­les said.

Per­sad-Bisses­sar’s com­ment was quick­ly backed by Leader of Gov­ern­ment Busi­ness Bar­ry Padarath, who ac­cused Beck­les of hypocrisy and poor lead­er­ship.

Padarath took aim at Beck­les, ac­cus­ing her of cow­ardice and poor lead­er­ship over her con­tin­ued si­lence on the fu­ture of John-Bates.

Padarath dis­missed Beck­les’ com­ments, say­ing the Op­po­si­tion Leader was mak­ing her­self “a joke to the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go.”

He ac­cused Beck­les of hypocrisy in rais­ing con­cerns about ques­tion­able char­ac­ters, point­ing in­stead to al­leged mis­con­duct un­der the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion.

“Ques­tion­able char­ac­ter­is­tics is when one gives their fa­ther CEPEP con­tracts, when min­is­ters of gov­ern­ment un­der the for­mer regime sought to en­rich them­selves and their fam­i­lies with mil­lions, if not bil­lions of dol­lars in state con­tracts, while the peo­ple of Trinidad and To­ba­go suf­fered,” Padarath told Guardian Me­dia.

He ar­gued that Beck­les was well aware of what “ques­tion­able char­ac­ter­is­tics” looked like, claim­ing sev­er­al mem­bers of the for­mer ad­min­is­tra­tion had ex­em­pli­fied such con­duct dur­ing her tenure.

Padarath fur­ther ques­tioned Beck­les’ abil­i­ty to lead, ar­gu­ing that her fail­ure to act de­ci­sive­ly on what he de­scribed as se­ri­ous is­sues with­in her own par­ty un­der­mines her cred­i­bil­i­ty and lead­er­ship am­bi­tions.

“If the Leader of the Op­po­si­tion can­not deal with se­ri­ous mat­ters in her own par­ty of ques­tion­able ac­tions of ques­tion­able char­ac­ter­is­tics, then how else is she ex­pect­ed to deal should she be the Prime Min­is­ter of this coun­try?” he asked.

He said Beck­les’ be­hav­iour on this mat­ter demon­strat­ed weak lead­er­ship.

“Her con­tin­ued si­lence on this mat­ter, her con­tin­ued de­flec­tion on this mat­ter is noth­ing short of poor lead­er­ship. It con­tin­ues to demon­strate to the peo­ple that she is a cow­ard, she is afraid to take the hard and tough de­ci­sions,” Padarath said.

He al­so sug­gest­ed Beck­les may be re­luc­tant to re­move John-Bates and Sen­a­tor Faris Al-Rawi be­cause of the pos­si­ble po­lit­i­cal fall­out with­in the op­po­si­tion, warn­ing that such a move could deep­en in­ter­nal di­vi­sions with­in the PNM.

John-Bates was re­moved from the Pub­lic Ad­min­is­tra­tion and Ap­pro­pri­a­tions Com­mit­tee (PAAC) on April 16, two days af­ter con­cerns arose over the al­leged edit­ing of a wit­ness state­ment by for­mer health min­is­ter Ter­rence Deyals­ingh ahead of his ap­pear­ance be­fore the com­mit­tee, of which John-Bates was then a mem­ber.

Al-Rawi is al­so ac­cused of as­sist­ing in the process but he has ar­gued that he was act­ing in the ca­pac­i­ty of Deyals­ingh’s lawyer.

The PAAC is cur­rent­ly in­ves­ti­gat­ing the pro­cure­ment and im­por­ta­tion of phar­ma­ceu­ti­cals, as it seeks to un­cov­er what it has de­scribed as “un­fair trade prac­tices.”